Recent progress in next-generation platform standards for physics instrumentation and controls

In 2009, after several years of workshop meetings and planning, several laboratories of the international Physics community launched a new instrument platform standardization effort with PICMG, the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group. The goal was an extension of the new serial gigabit backplane ATCA Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture platform. The main strategy was to assign uncommitted serial ports in the backplane to extend the current features of ATCA and MicroTCA, based on the Advanced Mezzanine Card package, to gain a much larger range of IO options than needed for Telecom blade and server systems. In late 2011 the new xTCA for Physics Technical Committee issued its first two PICMG standards, one for the ATCA interface to the RTM (Rear Transition Module) and another for a double-wide AMC board and shelf standard with all the features of the main ATCA product including redundancy and a new RTM and extended options lines for clocks, triggers, interlocks and vector summing. This paper describes recent industry progress in establishing Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) infrastructure and new lab applications developments using the new standards.