Advanced Mezzanine Cards are

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...

s (PCBs) that follow a

specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificat ...

of the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG). Known as AdvancedMC or AMC, the official specification designation is AMC.''x''. Originally AMC was targeted to requirements for

carrier grade In telecommunication, a "carrier grade" or "carrier class" refers to a system, or a hardware or software component that is extremely reliable, well tested and proven in its capabilities. Carrier grade systems are tested and engineered to meet or ...

communications equipment, but later used in other markets. AMC modules are designed to work standalone, hot pluggable on any carrier card (base boards and system carrier boards in

AdvancedTCA Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA or AdvancedTCA) is the largest specification effort in the history of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), with more than 100 companies participating. Known as AdvancedTCA ...

Systems) or as a hot pluggable board into a backplane directly as defined by

MicroTCA MicroTCA (short for ''Micro Telecommunications Computing Architecture'', also: μTCA) is a modular, open standard, created and maintained by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG). It provides the electrical, mechanical, thermal an ...

specifications. The AMC standard differs from other mezzanine card standards such as PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC), PCIexpress Mezzanine Card XMC and

FMC – 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 con ...

by the 0 degree instead of 90 degree orientation of its connector enabling hot plug of the AMC.

Specifications

*AMC.0 is the "base" or "core" specification. The AdvancedMC definition alone defines a protocol agnostic connector to connect to a carrier card or a backplane. Intermediate revisions are known as engineering change notices, or ECNs. :R1.0 adopted January 3, 2005 :ECN-001 adopted June 2006 :R2.0 adopted November 15, 2006 An AMC card can use proprietary

LVDS Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS), also known as TIA/EIA-644, is a technical standard that specifies electrical characteristics of a differential, serial signaling standard. LVDS operates at low power and can run at very high speeds ...

-based signaling, or one of the following AMC specifications: *AMC.1

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common m ...

(and PCI Express Advanced Switching) (

ratified Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent that lacked the authority to bind the principal legally. Ratification defines the international act in which a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties inte ...

) *AMC.2 Gigabit

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 ...

and XAUI (ratified) *AMC.3 Storage (ratified) *AMC.4 Serial RapidIO (ratified)

Sizes

There are six types of AMC cards ("''Module''") available. A ''Full-size'' Module is the most common, allowing up to 23.25 mm high components (from centerline of PCB). A ''Mid-size'' Module allows component heights maxed at 11.65 to 14.01 mm (depending on board location). A ''Compact'' Module allows only 8.18 mm.

AMCs used in AdvancedTCA systems

To use AMCs in ATCA-systems a special carrier card known as ''hybrid'' or ''cutaway'' carrier is required to hold one Full-size Module or two Compact-size (see connectors below). Each height is paired with a width, ''single'' or ''double'', describing how many carrier slots the board fills. A double width card allows more component space, but does not provide any additional power or bandwidth because it only uses a single connector. The

pinout In electronics, a pinout (sometimes written "pin-out") is a cross-reference between the contacts, or ''pins'', of an electrical connector or electronic component, and their functions. "Pinout" now supersedes the term "basing diagram" that was the s ...

of the AMC

electrical connector Components of an electrical circuit are electrically connected if an electric current can run between them through an electrical conductor. An electrical connector is an electromechanical device used to create an electrical connection betwee ...

on an ATCA-AMC carrier or motherboard is fairly complex, with up to 170

signal trace In electronics, a signal trace or circuit trace on a printed circuit board (PCB) or integrated circuit (IC) is the equivalent of a wire for conducting signals. Each trace consists of a flat, narrow part of the copper foil that remains after etchin ...

s. There are four different lengths the traces can be, which allows

hot swapping Hot swapping is the replacement or addition of components to a computer system without stopping, shutting down, or rebooting the system; hot plugging describes the addition of components only. Components which have such functionality are sai ...

by knowing in advance which traces will become active in which order upon insertion. To help reduce cost for mass production, a card may only require the traces on one side (pins 1 to 85). The possibility of using only half the pin locations, combined with various height combinations, results in four different connector types that are available on the carrier card: Bay sizes:PICMG Advanced Mezzanine Card AMC.0 R2.0, Table 2-1 {, class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" !Bay!!Aperture!!Connector!!Compact Module!!Mid-size Module!!Full-size Module , - !Compact Conventional Bay , 3, , B, B+, , Slot B, , -, , - , - !Mid-size Conventional Bay , 4, , B, B+, , Convert face plate to mid-size, , Slot B, , - , - !Single Slot Cutaway Bay , 6, , B, B+, , Convert face plate to full-size, , Convert face plate to full-size, , Slot B , - !Dual Slot Cutaway Bay , 6, , AB, A+B+, , Slots A and B, , Convert face plate to full-size, , Slot B

AMCs used in MicroTCA systems

The AdvancedMC card is considered powerful enough that there are situations where the processing functionality is the only requirement. The MicroTCA standard is targeted at supplying a COTS

chassis A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of an artificial object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpa ...

that will allow AMC cards to function without any AdvancedTCA carrier card. The function of the ATCA carrier board and of the ATCA shelf manager are concentrated on one board, which is called the MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH). On July 6, 2006, MicroTCA R1.0 was approved. Since this approval, companies like Advantech, Kontron, N.A.T., Annapolis Micro Systems, VadaTech Inc. , have launched AMC and MCH products. Versions of MicroTCA with fewer AdvancedMC card slots are informally known as ''NanoTCA'' and ''PicoTCA''.

References

External links

Official PICMG SitePICMG AMC pageIntroduction to Advanced TCA and the MicroTCA.4, Presentation 2012 by SLAC
(English)
The MicroTCA SummitcoreIPM Project: Free & Open Source firmware for AMC Platform Management
CoreIPM firmware ported to TI MSP430. (

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

)
Example of a MicroTCA Carrier Hub
(English)
MicroTCA Overview Guide - vendor developed
(English) Computer buses Telecommunications equipment