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In
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a
printed circuit board that can be inserted into an
electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus slot) on a computer's
motherboard (see also
backplane
A backplane (or "backplane system") is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used as a back ...
) to add functionality to a computer system. Sometimes the design of the computer's case and motherboard involves placing most (or all) of these slots onto a separate, removable card. Typically such cards are referred to as a
riser card
A Riser Card is a printed circuit board that gives a computer motherboard the option for additional expansion cards to be added to the computer.
Usage
Risers is usually connected to the mainboard's slot through an edge connector, though some, ...
in part because they project upward from the board and allow expansion cards to be placed above and parallel to the motherboard.
Expansion cards allow the capabilities and interfaces of a computer system to be extended or supplemented in a way appropriate to the tasks it will perform. For example, a high-speed multi-channel data acquisition system would be of no use in a personal computer used for bookkeeping, but might be a key part of a system used for industrial process control. Expansion cards can often be installed or removed in the field, allowing a degree of user customization for particular purposes. Some expansion cards take the form of "daughterboards" that plug into connectors on a supporting system board.
In
personal computing
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...
, notable expansion buses and expansion card standards include the
S-100 bus
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983 ''(withdrawn)'', is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. computers, consisting of p ...
from 1974 associated with the
CP/M operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
, the 50-pin expansion slots of the original
Apple II computer from 1977 (unique to Apple), IBM's
Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) introduced with the
IBM PC in 1981,
Acorn's
tube expansion bus on the
BBC Micro
The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...
also from 1981, IBM's patented and proprietary
Micro Channel architecture (MCA) from 1987 that never won favour in the
clone market, the vastly improved
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) that displaced ISA in 1992, and
PCI Express from 2003 which abstracts the interconnect into high-speed communication "lanes" and relegates all other functions into software protocol.
History
Vacuum-tube based computers had modular construction, but individual functions for peripheral devices filled a cabinet, not just a printed circuit board. Processor, memory and I/O cards became feasible with the development of
integrated circuits. Expansion cards make processor systems adaptable to the needs of the user by making it possible to connect various types of devices, including I/O, additional memory, and optional features (such as a
floating point unit
Floating may refer to:
* a type of dental work performed on horse teeth
* use of an isolation tank
* the guitar-playing technique where chords are sustained rather than scratched
* ''Floating'' (play), by Hugh Hughes
* Floating (psychological ...
) to the central processor. Minicomputers, starting with the
PDP-8
The PDP-8 is a 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneer ...
, were made of multiple cards communicating through, and powered by, a passive
backplane
A backplane (or "backplane system") is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used as a back ...
.
The first commercial
microcomputer to feature expansion slots was the
Micral N, in 1973. The first company to establish a
''de facto'' standard was Altair with the
Altair 8800, developed 1974–1975, which later became a multi-manufacturer standard, the
S-100 bus
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983 ''(withdrawn)'', is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. computers, consisting of p ...
. Many of these computers were also passive backplane designs, where all elements of the computer, (processor, memory, and I/O) plugged into a card cage which passively distributed signals and power between the cards.
Proprietary
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
implementations for systems such as the
Apple II co-existed with multi-manufacturer standards.
IBM PC and descendants
IBM introduced what would retroactively be called the
Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus with the IBM PC in 1981. At that time, the technology was called the PC bus. The
IBM XT
The IBM Personal Computer XT (model 5160, often shortened to PC/XT) is the second computer in the IBM Personal Computer line, released on March 8, 1983. Except for the addition of a built-in hard drive and extra expansion slots, it is very simila ...
, introduced in 1983, used the same bus (with slight exception). The 8-bit PC and XT bus was extended with the introduction of the IBM AT in 1984. This used a second connector for extending the address and data bus over the XT, but was backward compatible; 8-bit cards were still usable in the AT 16-bit slots. Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) became the designation for the IBM AT bus after other types were developed. Users of the ISA bus had to have in-depth knowledge of the hardware they were adding to properly connect the devices, since memory addresses, I/O port addresses, and DMA channels had to be configured by switches or jumpers on the card to match the settings in driver software.
IBM's
MCA bus, developed for the PS/2 in 1987, was a competitor to ISA, also their design, but fell out of favor due to the ISA's industry-wide acceptance and IBM's licensing of MCA. EISA, the 32-bit extended version of ISA championed by
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
, was used on some PC motherboards until 1997, when Microsoft declared it a "legacy" subsystem in the
PC 97 industry white-paper. Proprietary local buses (q.v. Compaq) and then the
VESA Local Bus
The VESA Local Bus (usually abbreviated to VL-Bus or VLB) is a short-lived expansion bus introduced during the i486 generation of x86 IBM-compatible personal computers. Created by VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association), the VESA Local Bus ...
Standard, were late 1980s expansion buses that were tied but not exclusive to the 80386 and 80486
CPU bus. The
PC/104 bus is an
embedded bus that copies the ISA bus.
Intel launched their
PCI bus
PCI may refer to:
Business and economics
* Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards
** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors
* Prov ...
chipsets along with the
P5-based
Pentium
Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and P ...
CPUs in 1993. The
PCI bus was introduced in 1991 as a replacement for ISA. The standard (now at version 3.0) is found on PC motherboards to this day. The PCI standard supports bus bridging: as many as ten daisy chained PCI buses have been tested.
Cardbus, using the
PCMCIA connector, is a PCI format that attaches peripherals to the Host PCI Bus via PCI to PCI Bridge. Cardbus is being supplanted by
ExpressCard format.
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
introduced the
AGP bus in 1997 as a dedicated video acceleration solution. AGP devices are logically attached to the PCI bus over a PCI-to-PCI bridge. Though termed a bus, AGP usually supports only a single card at a time (
Legacy BIOS support issues). From 2005
PCI Express has been replacing both PCI and AGP. This standard, approved in 2004, implements the logical PCI protocol over a serial communication interface. PC/104(-Plus) or
Mini PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer and is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format t ...
are often added for expansion on small form factor boards such as
Mini-ITX
Mini-ITX is a motherboard form-factor, developed by VIA Technologies in 2001. They are commonly used in small-configured computer systems. Originally, they were a niche product, designed for fan-less cooling with a low power consumption archi ...
.
For their
1000 EX and
1000 HX models, Tandy Computer designed the PLUS expansion interface, an adaptation of the XT-bus supporting cards of a smaller form factor. Because it is electrically compatible with the XT bus (a.k.a. 8-bit ISA or XT-ISA), a passive adapter can be made to connect XT cards to a PLUS expansion connector. Another feature of PLUS cards is that they are stackable. Another bus that offered stackable expansion modules was the "sidecar" bus used by the IBM
PCjr
The IBM PCjr (pronounced "PC junior") was a home computer produced and marketed by IBM from March 1984 to May 1985, intended as a lower-cost variant of the IBM PC with hardware capabilities better suited for video games, in order to compete mor ...
. This may have been electrically comparable to the XT bus; it most certainly had some similarities since both essentially exposed the 8088 CPU's address and data buses, with some buffering and latching, the addition of
interrupt
In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, ...
s and
DMA provided by Intel add-on chips, and a few system
fault detection lines (Power Good, Memory Check, I/O Channel Check). Again, PCjr sidecars are not technically expansion cards, but expansion modules, with the only difference being that the sidecar is an expansion card enclosed in a plastic box (with holes exposing the connectors).
External expansion buses
Laptops are generally unable to accept most expansion cards intended for desktop computers. Consequently, several compact expansion standards were developed.
The original
PC Card expansion card standard is essentially a compact version of the ISA bus. The
CardBus expansion card standard is an evolution of the PC card standard to make it into a compact version of the PCI bus. The original
ExpressCard standard acts like it is either a USB 2.0 peripheral or a PCI Express 1.x x1 device. ExpressCard 2.0 adds SuperSpeed USB as another type of interface the card can use. Unfortunately, CardBus and ExpressCard are vulnerable to
DMA attack
A DMA attack is a type of side channel attack in computer security, in which an attacker can penetrate a computer or other device, by exploiting the presence of high-speed expansion ports that permit direct memory access (DMA).
DMA is included in ...
unless the laptop has an IOMMU that is configured to thwart these attacks.
One notable exception to the above is the inclusion of a single internal slot for a special reduced size version of the desktop standard. The most well known examples are
Mini-PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer and is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format t ...
or
Mini PCIe
PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial communication, serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older Conventional PCI, PCI, PCI-X and A ...
. Such slots were usually intended for a specific purpose such as offering "built-in" wireless networking or upgrading the system at production with a discrete GPU.
Other families
Most other computer lines, including those from
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
such as the (
Apple II and
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
),
Tandy,
Commodore
Commodore may refer to:
Ranks
* Commodore (rank), a naval rank
** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom
** Commodore (United States)
** Commodore (Canada)
** Commodore (Finland)
** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore''
* Air commodore ...
,
Amiga, and
Atari, offered their own expansion buses. The
Amiga used
Zorro II Zorro II is the general purpose expansion bus used by the Amiga 2000 computer. The bus is mainly a buffered extension of the Motorola 68000 bus, with support for bus mastering DMA. The expansion slots use a 100-pin connector and the card form factor ...
. Apple used a proprietary system with seven 50-pin-slots for
Apple II peripheral cards The Apple II line of computers supported a number of Apple II peripheral cards. In an era before plug and play USB or Bluetooth connections, these were expansion cards that plugged into slots on the motherboard. They added to and extended the funct ...
, then later used both variations on
Processor Direct Slot
A processor direct slot (PDS) is a slot incorporated into many older Macintosh models that allowed direct access to the signal pins of a CPU, similar to the functionality of a local bus in PCs. This would result in much higher speeds than having ...
and
NuBus
NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital for th ...
for its Macintosh series until 1995, when they switched to a PCI Bus.
Generally speaking, most PCI expansion cards will function on any
CPU platform which incorporates PCI bus hardware provided there is a software driver for that type. PCI video cards and any other cards that contain their own
BIOS or other ROM are problematic, although video cards conforming to VESA Standards may be used for secondary monitors. DEC Alpha, IBM PowerPC, and NEC MIPS workstations used PCI bus connectors. Both Zorro II and NuBus were
plug and play
In computing, a plug and play (PnP) device or computer bus is one with a specification that facilitates the recognition of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving resou ...
, requiring no hardware configuration by the user.
Other computer buses were used for industrial control, instruments, and scientific systems. One specific example is HP-IB (or Hewlett Packard Interface Bus) which was ultimately standardized as
IEEE-488
IEEE 488 is a short-range digital communications 8-bit parallel multi-master interface bus specification developed by Hewlett-Packard as HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus). It subsequently became the subject of several standards, and is ...
(aka GPIB). Some well-known historical standards include
VMEbus
VMEbus (Versa Module Europa or Versa Module Eurocard bus) is a computer bus standard, originally developed for the Motorola 68000 line of CPUs, but later widely used for many applications and standardized by the IEC as ANSI/IEEE 1014-1987. ...
,
STD Bus
The STD Bus is a bus (computing), computer bus that was used primarily for industrial control systems, but has also found applications in computing. The STD Bus has also been designated as STD-80, referring to its relation to the Zilog Z80 series ...
,
SBus
SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers (including all SPARCstations) from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s. It was introduced by Sun in 1989 to be a high-speed bus counterpart to their high-speed S ...
(specific to Sun's SPARCStations), and numerous others.
Video game consoles
Even many
video game consoles, such as the
Nintendo Entertainment System and the
Sega Genesis, included expansion buses in some form; In at least the case of the Genesis, the expansion bus was proprietary. In fact the cartridge slots of many cartridge-based consoles (not including the
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocesso ...
) would qualify as expansion buses, as they exposed both read and write capabilities of the system's internal bus. However, the expansion modules attached to these interfaces, though functionally the same as expansion cards, are not technically expansion cards, due to their physical form.
Applications
The primary purpose of an expansion card is to provide or expand on features not offered by the motherboard. For example, the original
IBM PC did not have on-board graphics or hard drive capability. In that case, a graphics card and an
ST-506
The ST-506 and ST-412 (sometimes written ST506 and ST412) were early hard disk drive products introduced by Seagate in 1980 and 1981 respectively, that later became construed as hard disk drive interfaces: the ST-506 disk interface and the ST-41 ...
hard disk controller card provided graphics capability and hard drive interface respectively. Some
single-board computers made no provision for expansion cards, and may only have provided IC sockets on the board for limited changes or customization. Since reliable multi-pin connectors are relatively costly, some mass-market systems such as
home computers had no expansion slots and instead used a card-edge connector at the edge of the main board, putting the costly matching socket into the cost of the peripheral device.
In the case of expansion of on-board capability, a motherboard may provide a
single serial RS232 port or
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...
port. An expansion card can be installed to offer multiple RS232 ports or multiple and higher bandwidth
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...
ports. In this case, the motherboard provides basic functionality but the expansion card offers additional or enhanced ports.
Physical construction
One edge of the expansion card holds the contacts (the edge connector or
pin header
A pin header (or simply header) is a form of electrical connector. A male pin header consists of one or more rows of metal pins molded into a plastic base, often apart, though available in many spacings. Male pin headers are cost-effective du ...
) that fit into the slot. They establish the electrical contact between the electronics on the card and on the motherboard. Peripheral expansion cards generally have connectors for external cables. In the PC-compatible personal computer, these connectors were located in the support bracket at the back of the cabinet. Industrial backplane systems had connectors mounted on the top edge of the card, opposite to the backplane pins.
Depending on the
form factor of the motherboard and
case, around one to seven expansion cards can be added to a computer system. 19 or more expansion cards can be installed in backplane systems. When many expansion cards are added to a system, total power consumption and heat dissipation become limiting factors. Some expansion cards take up more than one slot space. For example, many
graphics cards on the market as of 2010 are dual slot graphics cards, using the second slot as a place to put an active
heat sink
A heat sink (also commonly spelled heatsink) is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant, where it is dissipated away from the device, th ...
with a fan.
Some cards are "low-profile" cards, meaning that they are shorter than standard cards and will fit in a lower height computer chassis. (There is a "low profile PCI card" standard
that specifies a much smaller bracket and board area). The group of expansion cards that are used for external connectivity, such as
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics ...
,
SAN or
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
cards, are commonly referred to as
input/output
In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...
cards (or I/O cards).
Daughterboard
A daughterboard, daughtercard, mezzanine board or piggyback board is an expansion card that attaches to a system directly. Daughterboards often have plugs, sockets, pins or other attachments for other boards. Daughterboards often have only internal connections within a computer or other electronic devices, and usually access the motherboard directly rather than through a
computer bus. Such boards are used to either improve various memory capacities of a computer, enable the computer to connect to certain kinds of networks that it previous could not connect to, or to allow for users to customize their computers for various purposes such as gaming.
Daughterboards are sometimes used in computers in order to allow for expansion cards to fit parallel to the motherboard, usually to maintain a small
form factor. This form are also called
riser card
A Riser Card is a printed circuit board that gives a computer motherboard the option for additional expansion cards to be added to the computer.
Usage
Risers is usually connected to the mainboard's slot through an edge connector, though some, ...
s, or risers. Daughterboards are also sometimes used to expand the basic functionality of an electronic device, such as when a certain model has features added to it and is released as a new or separate model. Rather than redesigning the first model completely, a daughterboard may be added to a special connector on the main board. These usually fit on top of and parallel to the board, separated by
spacers or standoffs, and are sometimes called mezzanine cards due to being stacked like the
mezzanine of a
theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
.
Wavetable cards (
sample-based synthesis
Sample-based synthesis is a form of audio synthesis that can be contrasted to either subtractive synthesis or additive synthesis. The principal difference with sample-based synthesis is that the seed waveforms are sampled sounds or instruments ...
cards) are often
mounted
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, Co ...
on
sound card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...
s in this manner.
Some mezzanine card interface standards include
the 400 pin
FPGA Mezzanine Card
FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) is an ANSI/VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) 57.1 standard that defines I/O mezzanine modules with connection to an FPGA or other device with re-configurable I/O capability. It specifies a low profile c ...
(FMC);
the 172 pin High Speed Mezzanine Card (HSMC);
the
PCI Mezzanine Card
A PCI Mezzanine Card or PMC is a printed circuit board assembly manufactured to the IEEE P1386.1 standard. This standard combines the electrical characteristics of the PCI bus with the mechanical dimensions of the Common Mezzanine Card or CMC for ...
(PMC);
XMC mezzanines;
the
Advanced Mezzanine Card Advanced Mezzanine Cards are printed circuit boards (PCBs) that follow a specification of the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG).
Known as AdvancedMC or AMC, the official specification designation is AMC.''x''. Originally AMC was ...
;
IndustryPacks (VITA 4), the
GreenSpring Computers Mezzanine modules;
etc.
Examples of daughterboard-style expansion cards include:
*
Enhanced Graphics Adapter
The Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) is an IBM PC graphics adapter and de facto computer display standard from 1984 that superseded the CGA standard introduced with the original IBM PC, and was itself superseded by the VGA standard in 1987. In ...
piggyback board, adds memory beyond 64 KB, up to 256 KB
*
Expanded memory
In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory (640 KiB).
''Expanded memory'' is an umbrella term for several incompatible tec ...
piggyback board, adds additional memory to some EMS and EEMS boards
*ADD daughterboard
*RAID daughterboard
*
Network interface controller
A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network.
Ear ...
(NIC) daughterboard
*CPU Socket daughterboard
*Bluetooth daughterboard
*Modem daughterboard
*AD/DA/DIO daughter-card
*Communication daughterboard (CDC)
*Server Management daughterboard (SMDC)
*Serial ATA connector daughterboard
*Robotic daughterboard
*Access control List daughterboard
*
Arduino "shield" daughterboards
*Beaglebone "cape" daughterboard
*Raspberry Pi "HAT add-on board"
*Network Daughterboard (NDB). Commonly integrates: bus interfaces logic,
LLC,
PHY
PHY is an abbreviation for the physical layer of the OSI model and refers to the circuitry required to implement physical layer functions.
PHY or Phy may also refer to:
* Phy, the drug methadone
* Phetchabun Airport (IATA code), Thailand
See ...
and Magnetics onto a single board.
Standards
*
PCI Extended (PCI-X)
*
PCI Express (PCIe)
*
Mini PCIe
PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial communication, serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older Conventional PCI, PCI, PCI-X and A ...
*
M.2
M.2, pronounced ''m dot two'' and formerly known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF), is a specification for internally mounted computer expansion cards and associated connectors. M.2 replaces the mSATA standard, which uses the PCI Ex ...
*
Accelerated Graphics Port
Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is a parallel expansion card standard, designed for attaching a video card to a computer system to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. It was originally designed as a successor to PCI-type connect ...
(AGP)
*
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)
*
Industry Standard Architecture (ISA)
*
Micro Channel architecture (MCA)
*
VESA Local Bus
The VESA Local Bus (usually abbreviated to VL-Bus or VLB) is a short-lived expansion bus introduced during the i486 generation of x86 IBM-compatible personal computers. Created by VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association), the VESA Local Bus ...
(VLB)
*
CardBus/PC card/PCMCIA (for notebook computers)
*
ExpressCard (for notebook computers)
*
Audio/modem riser
The audio/modem riser (AMR) is a riser card, riser expansion slot found on the motherboards of some Pentium (brand), Pentium III, Pentium 4, Duron, and Athlon personal computers. It was designed by Intel to interface with chipsets and provide an ...
(AMR)
*
Communications and networking riser
Communications and networking riser (CNR) is a slot found on certain PC motherboards and used for specialized networking, audio, and telephony equipment. A motherboard manufacturer can choose to provide audio, networking, or modem functionality in ...
(CNR)
*
CompactFlash
CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.
CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...
(for handheld computers and high speed cameras and camcorders)
*
SBus
SBus is a computer bus system that was used in most SPARC-based computers (including all SPARCstations) from Sun Microsystems and others during the 1990s. It was introduced by Sun in 1989 to be a high-speed bus counterpart to their high-speed S ...
(1990s
SPARC
SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...
-based
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
computers)
*
Zorro
Zorro ( Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante w ...
(Commodore
Amiga)
*
NuBus
NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital for th ...
(Apple
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
)
*
FPGA Mezzanine Card
FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) is an ANSI/VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) 57.1 standard that defines I/O mezzanine modules with connection to an FPGA or other device with re-configurable I/O capability. It specifies a low profile c ...
(FMC)
See also
*
Compatibility card
A compatibility card is an expansion card for computers that allows it to have hardware emulation with another device. While compatibility cards date back at least to the Apple II family, the majority of them were made for 16-bit computers, often ...
*
Host adapter
In computer hardware, a host controller, host adapter, or host bus adapter (HBA), connects a computer system bus, which acts as the host system, to other network and storage devices. The terms are primarily used to refer to devices for conne ...
*
i-RAM
The i-RAM is a solid-state storage device produced by Gigabyte and released in June 2005. It has four DDR RAM DIMM slots, and a connection via a SATA port enables a PC to see the i-RAM as a hard disk drive, which can also be made bootable. The ...
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M-Module, an industrial mezzanine standard for modular I/O
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Network card
A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network.
Ear ...
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Physics card
A physics processing unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. It is an example of hardware acceleration.
Examples of calculations involving a PPU mi ...
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POST card
A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. There are novelty exceptions, such as wood ...
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Riser card
A Riser Card is a printed circuit board that gives a computer motherboard the option for additional expansion cards to be added to the computer.
Usage
Risers is usually connected to the mainboard's slot through an edge connector, though some, ...
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Sound card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...
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TV tuner card
A TV tuner card is a kind of television tuner that allows television signals to be received by a computer. Most TV tuners also function as video capture cards, allowing them to record television programs onto a hard disk much like the digital v ...
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Video card
A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...
References
External links
Computer expansion slots listing and pinouts
{{DEFAULTSORT:Expansion Card
Computer buses
Printed circuit board manufacturing