FPGA-Based Systems With MicroTCA
FPGA-Based Systems With MicroTCA
Many FPGA-based systems projects are rather low volume and, therefore, favor off-the-shelf hardware over the costs and risks of custom hardware (PCB) design.
MicroTCA or mTCA or µTCA is a 20+ year old standard from PICMG for implementing embedded systems using off-the-shelf hardware. Most often MicroTCA is used for test & measurement or for scientific applications when application specific IOs and signals need to be processed where FPGAs provide the flexibility and processing performance.
However, as we will demonstrate in this Technical Brief, MicroTCA carries a huge baggage, and has little to no advantages over other approaches, namely FPGA based System-on-Modules or the “good old” PC architecture.