ATCA/μTCA for physics

ATCA/μTCA platforms are attractive because of the modern serial link architecture, high availability features and many packaging options. Less-demanding availability applications can be met economically by scaling back speed and redundancy. The ATCA specification was originally targeted for the Telecom industry but has gained recently a much wider user audience. The purpose of this paper is to report on present hardware and software R&D efforts where ATCA and μTCA are planned, already being used or in development using selected examples for accelerator and detectors in the Physics community. It will present also the status of a proposal for physics extensions to ATCA/μTCA specifications to promote inter-operability of laboratory and industry designs for physics.