CP-TA’s New Test Tools and Guidelines Encourage COTS Offerings

By Brian Wood, CP-TA

Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) offerings are really making headway. With Long Term Evolution (LTE) rollouts and deployments by Tier 1 Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) and Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) ramping up, the future of AdvancedTCA can only get brighter.

CP-TA is helping facilitate that future by offering vendors benchmark test tools and guidelines, thereby helping system integrators alleviate interoperability issues. Nirlay Kundu, who leads the CP-TA Technical Work Group (TWG) and recently blogged on its activities, has made great progress recently.

CP-TA’s thermal task force is now specifying a new tool based on differential pressure topology. Identifying such a tool is difficult since it must meet engineering requirements, contain the features customers are most likely to need, and be priced reasonably.

Meanwhile, the CP-TA manageability task force is close to offering the first test tool for the enumerated PICMG ATCA v3.0 requirements. This Windows-based tool will have a one-to-one mapping with the requirements and will include protocol decodes to assist a developer in seeing hex dumps and byte errors. Running it will be a quick way to claim PICMG compliance, as it will assess compliance with the specs accurately in just an hour. The tool is scheduled to be beta released this month, and CP-TA plans to demonstrate it at the next PICMG interoperability event in April.

CP-TA test tools are available directly from tool vendors (e.g., Polaris Networks). We should note that members can buy them at a discount. CP-TA members also benefit from discussing and debating ambiguous issues in the specifications and submitting change requests (CRs) to PICMG that align with their company’s design specifications.

If your company is not already a CP-TA member, I invite you to join us to take part in these and other significant activities. For more information about CP-TA and its xTCA interoperability work, please visit www.cp-ta.org.

Brian Wood is Marketing Work Group chair for the Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA). You may contact him via Karen Riley at kriley@nereus-worldwide.com.