ACADEMIA

The Mountain View Alliance (MVA), a consortia of consortia dedicated to creating a more coordinated approach to specifications and activities around platform design, today announced the acceptance of the RapidIO Trade Association as its latest member. The RapidIO Trade Association joins the Network Processing Forum (NPF), PICMG and the Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) as part of the Alliance that provides a forum for the coordination of the marketing and technical activities of its member organizations. "The success of RapidIO technology in many aspects directly depends on the success of the eco-system we support. The Mountain View Alliance is the macro system architecture focal point that helps formalize relationships with key players in that ecosystem, extends the breadth of support for open standards, and facilitates the design process," said Tom Cox, Executive Director of the RapidIO Trade Association. RapidIO is an established, scalable, open-standard, switched fabric, designed by the leaders in embedded computing specifically for OEMs building equipment in the wireless infrastructure, edge networking, storage, scientific, military and industrial markets. RapidIO delivers the reliability, cost effectiveness, performance and scalability required in these markets. In addition, RapidIO actively supports a development roadmap which is closely attuned to the technology and market changes affecting embedded infrastructure designers. Brian Holden, the NPF representative to the MVA added: "The RapidIO Trade Association represents a technology standard that is used alongside many of our members' specifications; their presence in the Mountain View Alliance will provide us with much broader industry coverage." The Mountain View Alliance promotes an environment for coexistence and compatibility such that real applications can be created from COTS elements. Real life interoperability is a significant goal of the MVA and as such the Alliance members will work to harmonize their respective specifications aiming to avoid gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies that would lead to technical conflict. The group's founding members have been holding regular marketing and technical meetings since December 2004.