Standard Backplanes for CompactPCI® PlusIO (PICMG 2.30) and CPCI-S.0

2009-04-02, Andreas Lenkisch

PICMG 2.30 is an extension of the CompactPCI® specification PICMG 2.0 and is currently undergoing a round of voting by PICMG.

CompactPCI® PlusIO extends CompactPCI® with the aim of providing a soft migration path to the CompactPCI® Serial (PICMG CPCI-S.0) specification, which is now based solely on serial protocols.

The modern serial interfaces such as PCI Express®, SATA, USB and Ethernet that are lacking on CompactPCI® are provided by a CompactPCI® PlusIO (PICMG 2.30) CPU on the user-defined pins of the P2 connector of a 32-bit CPU board. From here a hybrid backplane designed to CompactPCI® PlusIO (PICMG 2.30) connects these signals to peripheral CompactPCI® Serial slots.

The P2 connector of the CPU board is compatible with its predecessor from the hard-metric series. This allows the CompactPCI® PlusIO CPU both to be used in earlier 32-bit CompactPCI® systems and to support new CompactPCI® Serial systems.

System manufacturers participating in the specification process will offer a number of typical configurations as standard backplanes or standard systems as stock items. For certain applications further configurations are certain to become standard products in order to also create a basis for small projects. The next step will be to define 'pure' CompactPCI® Serial backplanes and systems.

The illustrations show the existing configurations and those planned for the near future.

A hybrid backplane with 4 CompactPCI® and 4 peripheral CompactPCI® Serial slots

A hybrid backplane with 3 CompactPCI® and 2 peripheral CompactPCI® Serial slots plus a slot for a CompactPCI® PSU (to PICMG 2.11 with "P47" connector)

A pure CompactPCI® Serial backplane with 9 slots and
a pure CompactPCI® Serial backplane with approx. 3-5 slots (still at planning stage)

Dual CPUs with sideboard or mezzanine expansion module for CompactPCI® Serial that support the old parallel bus and also the new architecture on separate slots do not require special backplanes. Off-the-shelf single CPCI and CPCI-S.0 backplanes may be combined in any required configuration, with any combination of slots.

Left: a backplane can be configured with 1 to 8 CompactPCI® slots; right: a CompactPCI® Serial-compatible backplane with 1 to 9 slots. Power backplanes with 1 to 4 slots allow the configuration to be rounded down for small quantities. For projects requiring larger quantities, however, it will be economically more effective to design a special monolithic backplane to the project's exact requirements.


Andreas Lenkisch, Principal Engineer Backplanes, Schroff® GmbH, Straubenhardt, Germany

German version on ElektronikPraxis: Standard-Backplanes für CompactPCI PlusIO und CPlus

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