Advanced Mezzanine Card

Printed circuit boards
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 targeted to requirements for carrier grade 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 Systems) or as a hot pluggable board into a backplane directly as defined by MicroTCA 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 by the 0 degree instead of 90 degree orientation of its connector enabling hot plug of the AMC.

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.

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 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.