Its well-defined, fast and straightforward architecture makes MicroTCA a serious contender for high-end, real-time embedded systems.

Using popular gigabit serial fabrics like XAUI, PCIe and SRIO, it delivers substantial backplane bandwidth, more than adequate for many applications. It also provides a rich system infrastructure that includes various form factors, power and cooling strategies, system management facilities, high availability and redundancy features, all in a highly modular design.

Because of the wealth of MicroTCA products available for the cost-sensitive telecom community, systems are often 20% to 40% less expensive than comparable systems using more traditional embedded card cage architectures.

Complete 1600 MB/SEc MicroTCA Recording System

Extensions to the base specification now support ruggedized MicroTCA systems with both air- and conduction-cooled AMC modules, including specifications for shock, altitude and vibration required for many government and military applications. System level software written for PCIe or SRIO systems is highly portable to MicroTCA because of the standard fabric interconnects and the operating systems supported by available SBC AMC modules.

All in all, MicroTCA is definitely worth considering for your next data acquisition system. Click here to read the full article...

Pentek has just launched a 16-member family of AMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) products giving customers instant access to the extensive line of signal processing products in the Pentek catalog.

Pentek is leveraging their modular product architectures to bring a large array of options to market in a very short time. The Pentek 56xxx products fill a major I/O product gap in the AMC ecosystem by offering 16 different modules.

Features Supports Xilinx Virtex-7 VXT FPGAs GateXpress® supports dynamic FPGA reconfiguration across PCIe Three 200 MHz 16-bit A/Ds One digital upconverter Two 800 MHz 16-bit D/As 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM Sample clock synchronization to an external system reference LVPECL clock/sync bus for multimodule synchronization PCI Express (Gen. 1, 2 and 3) interface, up to x8 Optional LVDS connections to the Virtex-7 FPGA for custom I/O

Model 71720

Features Accepts RF signals from 800 MHz to 3 GHz in seven different models Accepts RF input levels from -60 dBm to -20 dBm 225 MHz IF output with 80 MHz output bandwidth Internal OCXO or external 10 MHz frequency reference

Model 8111

Features 4U 19-inch rackmount PC server chassis, 21-inch deep 64-bit Windows® or Linux® workstation Intel® Core™ i7 3.6 GHz processor 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM ReadyFlow® drivers and board support libraries installed Out-of-the-box test examples All I/O cables included

Model 8266

Features Portable system measuring 16.9" W x 9.5" D x 13.4" H Lightweight: approximately 30 pounds Shock- and vibration-resistant SSDs (Solid State Drives) perform well in vehicles, ships and aircraft Recording & playback of IF signals up to 700 MHz

Model 2727

• Signal bandwidths to 200 MHz
• 500 MHz 12-bit or 400 MHz 14-bit A/Ds
• 800 MHz 16-bit D/A
• SFDR > 70 dBFS
• Real-time aggregate recording rates up to 2.0 GB/sec
• Up to of 3.8 TB storage with front-panel removable SSD drives
• NTFS file format
• SystemFlow® GUI with Signal Viewer analysis tool
• Optional GPS time and position stamping
• High-performance Windows workstation

• Provides sample clocks for up to four Pentek Cobalt or Onyx boards
• Locks to user supplied 10 MHz reference clock or on-board reference
• Integrated reference OCXO provides exceptional frequency accuracy

• Immediately Start Application Development
• Assembled and pre-configured for Pentek Cobalt and Onyx PCIe boards
• Rackmount PC workstation with Windows or Linux
• ReadyFlow drivers and board support libraries installed