The xTCA industry has unarguably come a long way in a short time, but to coin a phrase from the Sci-Fi writer, William Gibson “the future is already here it’s just unevenly distributed” is somewhat synonymous to where interoperability in the xTCA ecosystem is today.

The xTCA and AMC specifications were a huge leap forward in standards creation, with PICMG members building on years of experience from defining previous generation specs. ATCA vendors and network equipment providers also quickly recognized interoperability as a top priority, with the latter forming the SCOPE Alliance to specify their needs for open, carrier grade base platforms. PICMG followed suit to simplify implementation by categorizing the mandatory and optional sections of the specifications, whilst the vendors formed CP-TA to promote interoperability and define certification programs.

CP-TA’s Interoperability Compliance Document (ICD) and Test Procedure Manual (TPM) clearly define the test methodologies for xTCA platforms and are a result of multi-vendor cooperation to ensure products will work together without major challenges to integrate them.

All these complementary initiatives have yielded exemplary results, but even with clear requirements and specifications, given the complex nature of the software and hardware architectures, it’s still difficult to ensure that products are interoperable without the use of recognized, industry standard tools. Certainly the task is better defined now than it was when the CompactPCI 2.9 management spec was introduced 10 years ago, however having been there, one might argue that the only viable way to align a products with the rest of the industry and to design rapidly for interoperability is through the use of standard tools.

It’s been a while since Advantech first started using the Polaris tester tools and they have been of immense use to us for the test and validation of new xTCA hardware designs and firmware releases. Prior to Advantech’s initial use of the test tools, much of our interoperability testing was performed at the CP-TA and PICMG plug-fests which swiftly revealed any misinterpretation of the specs. This fueled the ensuing and often lively debates between design engineers to incriminate the non-compliant element - all in a healthy spirit for the greater good of course. Like everyone involved, we learned a lot from the initial plug-fests and in fact our maiden event proved sufficiently compelling for us to make the decision to purchase the test suite from Polaris. Now when we attend the plug-fests it’s clear that more companies are using the testers prior to attending as the basic issues are eliminated ahead of time and the number of issues is dwindling rapidly.

Right now we’re thoroughly using all 3 testers: The ATCA Tester is an automated test suite for testing the management software in ATCA-based building blocks or systems and has been validated by the CP-TA as an authorized test tool. We make extensive use of it on our Intel Xeon –based node blades as well as in validating our switch blades. On the MicroTCA and AMC tester side, Thomas Kastner who sets Advantech’s strategic direction for platform management  has instituted the packages for testing the Module Management Controllers (MMC) of all of our AMCs, and in particular for the carrier managers on our MCH’s. As well as using them for Design Quality Assurance (DQA) during firmware development and upgrade phases we rely on them for qualification in the final QA processes. The time and effort this has saved us is immeasurable.

By all means feel free to write your own tools based on the ICD and the TPM. As well as facilitating self-implementation, they are also there to encourage more test software developers to offer a wider choice of tools. At the same time, it’s interesting to note that the frequency of customer requests for copies of Polaris Tester result-logs has been on the rise. That’s good news for the community as it endorses the efforts which CP-TA and Polaris have invested in bringing a reliable self-certification product to market.

By the way, you may be interested to know that Polaris offers a special deal to CP-TA members, another benefit for CP-TA participation in addition to the opportunity to influence technology directions and increase your marketing exposure.  Above all it can help bring the vendor-provider ecosystem another step closer to more evenly distributing the future, which is now.