Pigeon Point Systems Announces Industry's First Management Exerciser Board for AdvancedTCA.

CHICAGO -- Pigeon Point Systems(TM) announced today, at the SUPERCOMM 2004 Conference, the industry's first AdvancedTCA(R) Management Exerciser board, within the IPM Sentry(TM) product family. This board implements an AdvancedTCA IPM Controller -- the management subsystem required on all ATCA boards -- that is based on the IPM Sentry BMR-AVR-ATCA reference design, plus numerous other aids for exercising the management aspects of an AdvancedTCA shelf and its shelf manager. IPM Sentry is a family of hardware and software products that enable cost-effective, interoperable management of open modular platforms based on the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI). Using IPM Sentry components, developers of AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and CompactPCI products can quickly and cost-effectively incorporate compliant, competitive and interoperability tested management subsystems.

"Our IPM Sentry BMR reference designs already provide the quickest way to develop management subsystems of AdvancedTCA boards; dozens of boards from a broad range of companies are already benefiting from these designs," said Mark Overgaard, President of Pigeon Point Systems. "Our new AdvancedTCA Management Exerciser board is perfect for organizations that need to populate their shelves with live management controllers for test or demonstration purposes. Our AdvancedTCA Management Exerciser board provides a ready-made solution that requires no development effort. The board has already been used successfully by several of our ATCA shelf partners -- both to bring up and validate new shelf products and for shelf testing during PICMG(R)'s seventh ATCA Interoperability Workshop (AIW) last week."

The Management Exerciser board provides front panel features that allow easy monitoring and control of the management status of the board, including:

--Seven-segment LEDs that can display a wide range of information about the board, including its overall management state and the hardware address of the slot where it is installed, as well as temperatures and voltage measurements.

--LEDs showing the enable state for payload power supplies and backplane fabric E-Keying controls.

--Switches to enable/disable either or both of the dual redundant Intelligent Platform Management Bus (IPMB) connections to the shelf manager; these can be used to test IPMB fail over and recovery features of the shelf manager.

Taken together, these features make the Management Exerciser board a very cost-effective tool in ATCA shelf development and testing. The typical ATCA product board cannot easily be used for these purposes, since most of these features are not available (or even needed) on a conventional product board.

The IPM Sentry AdvancedTCA Management Exerciser board is available now, for a price of $1,250. The board is shipped with a specialized variant of the IPM Sentry BMR-AVR-ATCA firmware already installed, so the board is immediately ready to use. Source code licensees of BMR-AVR-ATCA firmware may choose to modify the firmware for their particular needs.

"Pigeon Point Systems continues to play a unique and valuable role in the rapid growth of the AdvancedTCA ecosystem, systematically providing off-the-shelf solutions to the platform management needs of AdvancedTCA product developers, making it easy for developers to take advantage of the sophisticated platform management architecture that AdvancedTCA defines. Their new Management Exerciser board is another unique contribution to the ecosystem," said Joe Pavlat, President of PICMG. "I expect this board to be widely used for test and demonstration purposes in AdvancedTCA shelves."

For more detail on the IPM Sentry products, visit www.pigeonpoint.com.

About Pigeon Point Systems

Pigeon Point Systems (PPS) provides products and services that enable cost-effective management of standards-based platforms -- including AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC (AMC), CompactTCA and CompactPCI -- and is a leader in the definition of those platforms. With its IPM Sentry shelf management products, PPS offers the first shelf management building blocks that compatibly support AdvancedTCA and CompactPCI, with similar support for CompactTCA to come. The IPM Sentry board management products -- also the first off-the-shelf offerings in the industry -- enable compact, cost-effective management subsystems for boards and other FRUs, including AMC carriers and AMCs. PPS chairs the Software Interoperability subcommittee, is a leader in the AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC and CompactTCA subcommittees and is active in many other technical subcommittees of PICMG. For more information about PPS, visit their web site at www.pigeonpoint.com or call their headquarters at 831-438-1565.

Note to Editors

Pigeon Point Systems, Hot Swap Kit and IPM Sentry are trademarks of Pigeon Point Systems. PICMG, CompactPCI, AdvancedTCA, CompactTCA and AdvancedMC are trademarks of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (the first three registered trademarks). Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.