Advanced Mezzanine Card

Advanced Mezzanine Cards are printed circuit boards (PCBs) that follow a specification of the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG), with more than 100 companies participating. Advanced Mezzanine Cards are printed circuit boards (PCBs) that follow a specification of the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG), with more than 100 companies participating. Known as AdvancedMC or AMC, the official specification designation is AMC.x (see below). At the early days AMC is targeted to requirements for the next generation of 'carrier grade' communications equipment. Nowadays it is used in nearly all kind of equipment demanding high flexibility, modularity and bandwidth. AMC are designed to work as standalone module, as hot pluggable module on any carrier card (base boards and system carrier boards in AdvancedTCA Systems) but also to plug as hot pluggable board into a backplane directly as defined by MicroTCA specification. The AMC standard differs from other mezzanine card standards such as PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC), PCIexpress Mezzanine Card XMC and FMC – FPGA Mezzanine Card by the 0 degree instead of 90 degree orientation of its connector enabling hot plug of the AMC. An AMC card can use proprietary LVDS-based signaling, or one of the following AMC specifications: 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.