The availability of ATCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) and MicroTCA (Micro Telecom Computing Architecture) platforms, and with them, AMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) solutions, represents a new era in which developers of telecom, military, medical and other processing-intensive applications are able to reduce internal R&D efforts, as well as manufacturing and operational expenses, by using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) building blocks from 3rd party suppliers. This trend is driving a wave of new systems and architectures for a wide variety of applications: audio and video gateways for 3G, IMS and other networks, media servers, packet-to-packet applications, session border controllers, cryptography, lawful interception, and medical image processing, to name a few. Many equipment manufacturers are entering the prototype stages today in order to define the systems of tomorrow.

The prototype stage is typically characterized by an internal design conflict: how to deal with high-level system issues without neglecting the detail-level issues necessary to ensure that the system will meet marketing requirements. This is the stage where a flexible solution can come in handy.The good news for those seeking such a solution is that it already exists, in the form of a DSP-based AMC board for ATCA, µTCA or proprietary systems. This modular AMC form factor DSP resource board has advanced triple play (voip, video, modem, fax) processing; a modular plug-in that carries up to four pairs of same/mixed types of DSPs; is RoHS-compliant; and supports a variety of configurations. This paradigm allows varying types of DSPs to be assembled simultaneously on a single AMC carrier.