Advantech’s MIC-5342 is a dual processor ATCA blade based on the Intel® platform formerly codenamed "River Forest". It enables the highest performance available in the ATCA form factor with up to 28 cores and 56 threads of processing power, fast PCI Express gen. 3 lanes running at up to 8Gbps, and best in class virtualization support. Two QPI interfaces between the CPUs improve memory and I/O access throughput and latencies when one processor needs to access resources hosted by the other socket. With four DDR4 DIMMs per socket in a quad channel design running up to 2400MT/s, the MIC-5342 not only offers superior memory bandwidth over 3-channel designs, but can also support RAM density up to 256GB. It outperforms previous generation dual socket designs while keeping similar thermal characteristics with balanced airflow resistance.

Fabric connectivity is implemented by two Intel® Ethernet controllers XL710-BM2 devices onboard, connecting to four backplane fabric channels. This allows the MIC-5342 to scale from legacy 10GbE to high speed 40GbE network interfaces as well as enable optional dual-dual star support for the most demanding applications utilizing 4 hub blades per system. A Fabric Mezzanine Module type II socket with PCIe x16 connectivity provides on-board expansion capability for additional front panel I/O, offload and acceleration controllers such as the Intel® Communications Chipset 8900 Series, IPSec offload engines, or customer specific logic.

The onboard IPMI firmware based on Advantech’s advanced IPMI core enhances modularity and flexibility for customization of system management features, and provides a framework for value-added features that enhance the Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, Usability and Manageability (RASUM) of the product. HPM.1 based updates, including rollback support, are available for all programmable components such as the BIOS, BIOS settings, IPMC firmware, and FPGA. Advantech’s IPMI solution, combined with an optimized UEFI BIOS, continues to offer advanced features used on previous generation Advantech MIC-533x blades, such as HPM.2 support, Dynamic Power Budgeting, BIOS redundancy, Real Time Clock Synchronization and MAC mirroring. Advantech’s IPMI firmware has been tested for CP-TA compliance using the Polaris Networks ATCA Test Suite and against a variety of AdvancedTCA shelf management solutions.

The MIC-5342 connects 8 PCIe gen.3 lanes to the Zone 3 interface for hot-swappable RTMs such as the RTM-5107, which supports two SAS HDDs. Please contact Advantech for more information about available RTMs. The MIC-5342 can also be easily customized based on Advantech’s unique Customized COTS framework with custom RTMs, FMMs, or modifications of the on-board system FPGA, IPMI and/or BIOS firmware.

The optimization of features and unmatched flexibility based on Advantech’s leading FMM technology make the MIC-5342 equally well suited for both control plane and application workloads in telecom networks.