Standardized solution for Management Controller for MTCA.4
Dariusz Makowski, Michael Fenner, F. Ludwig, Uroš Mavrič, Aleksander Mielczarek, Andrzej Napieralski, Piotr Perek, Jarosław Szewiński, H. Schlarb · 2014
The Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture (MTCA) standard is a modern platform, that is gaining popularity in the area of High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments. The standard provides extensive management, monitoring and diagnostics functionality. The hardware management is based on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), that was initially developed for management and monitoring of complex computers operation. The original IPMI specification was extended and new functions required for MTCA hardware management, were added. The Module Management Controller (MMC) is required on each Advanced Mezzanine Card installed in MTCA chassis. The Rear Transition Modules (RTMs) require Rear transition module Management Controller (RMC) that is specified in MTCA.4 extension specification. The commercially available implementations of MMC and RMC are expensive and do not provide the whole functionality that is required by specific HEP applications. Therefore, many research centres and commercial companies work on their own implementation of AMC or RTM controllers. The available implementations suffer because of lack of a standard and interoperability problems. The Authors developed a unified solution of management controller fully compliant to AMC and MTCA.4 standards. The MMC v1.00 solution is dedicated for management of AMC and RTM modules. The MMC v1.00 is based on Atmel ATxmega MCU and can be fully customized by user or used as a drop-in-module without any modifications. The paper discusses the functionality of the MMC v1.00 solution. The implementation was verified with developed evaluation kits for AMC and RTM cards.