In computing, an expansion card is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot on a computer's motherboard to add functionality to a computer system. Sometimes the design of the computer's case and motherboard involves placing most of these slots onto a separate, removable card. Typically such cards are referred to as a riser card in part because they project upward from the board and allow expansion cards to be placed above and parallel to the motherboard.
PCI 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 motherboard interface for personal computers' graphics cards, sound cards, hard disk drive host adapters, SSDs, Wi-Fi and Ethernet hardware connections. PCIe has numerous improvements over the older standards, including higher maximum system bus throughput, lower I/O pin count and smaller physical footprint, better performance scaling for bus devices, a more detailed error detection and reporting mechanism, and native hot-swap functionality. More recent revisions of the PCIe standard provide hardware support for I/O virtualization.
VMEbus is a computer bus standard physically based on Eurocard sizes.
SATA is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard to become the predominant interface for storage devices.
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 format.
PC/104 is a family of embedded computer standards which define both form factors and computer buses by the PC/104 Consortium. Its name derives from the 104 pins on the interboard connector (ISA) in the original PC/104 specification and has been retained in subsequent revisions, despite changes to connectors. PC/104 is intended for specialized environments where a small, rugged computer system is required. The standard is modular, and allows consumers to stack together boards from a variety of COTS manufacturers to produce a customized embedded system.
The Low Pin Count (LPC) bus is a computer bus used on IBM-compatible personal computers to connect low-bandwidth devices to the CPU, such as the BIOS ROM, "legacy" I/O devices, and Trusted Platform Module (TPM). "Legacy" I/O devices usually include serial and parallel ports, PS/2 keyboard, PS/2 mouse, and floppy disk controller.
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.
COM Express, a computer-on-module (COM) form factor, is a highly integrated and compact computer that can be used in a design application much like an integrated circuit component. Each module integrates core CPU and memory functionality, the common I/O of a PC/AT, USB, audio, graphics (PEG), and Ethernet. All I/O signals are mapped to two high density, low profile connectors on the bottom side of the module. COM Express employs a mezzanine-based approach. The COM modules plug into a baseboard that is typically customized to the application. Over time, the COM Express mezzanine modules can be upgraded to newer, backwards-compatible versions. COM Express is commonly used in Industrial, military, aerospace, gaming, medical, transportation, Internet of things, and general computing embedded applications.
A system on a module (SoM) is a board-level circuit that integrates a system function in a single module. It may integrate digital and analog functions on a single board. A typical application is in the area of embedded systems. Unlike a single-board computer, a SoM serves a special function like a system on a chip (SoC). The devices integrated in the SoM typically requires a high level of interconnection for reasons such as speed, timing, bus width etc.. There are benefits in building a SoM, as for SoC; one notable result is to reduce the cost of the base board or the main PCB. Two other major advantages of SoMs are design-reuse and that they can be integrated into many embedded computer applications.
VPX, also known as VITA 46, is a set of standards for connecting components of a computer, commonly used by defense contractors. Some are ANSI standards such as ANSI/VITA 46.0–2019. VPX provides VMEbus-based systems with support for switched fabrics over a new high speed connector. Defined by the VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA) working group starting in 2003, it was first demonstrated in 2004, and became an ANSI standard in 2007.
M-Modules are a mezzanine standard mainly used in industrial computers. Being mezzanines, they are always plugged on a carrier printed circuit board (PCB) that supports this format. The modules communicate with their carrier over a dedicated bus, and can have all kinds of special functions.
ESMexpress is a very compact computer-on-module (COM) standard. It is a complete processor module that currently supports several low-power Intel and PowerPC platforms. Apart from a CPU component, every module also includes memory and a range of serial communication interfaces such as PCI Express, Gigabit Ethernet, USB, SATA, SDVO, LVDS and HD audio. These interfaces are defined in the form factor's specification, and signals are assigned to two 120-pin connectors. This fixed pin mapping ensures that different ESMexpress modules can be exchanged more easily. Consequently, ESMexpress typically does not have an onboard FPGA. The idea behind this is to implement very specialized functions in an FPGA on the COM's carrier board to ease upgrades of the system CPU through exchange of the ESMexpress module.
Embedded System Module, or ESM, is a compact computer-on-module (COM) standard. An ESM module typically includes a CPU processor, memory, module-specific I/O interfaces and a number of basic front I/O connectors. They can be plugged on a carrier board or be used as a stand-alone processor card.
The FeaturePak standard defines a small form factor card for I/O expansion of embedded systems and other space-constrained computing applications. The cards are intended to be used for adding a wide range of capabilities, such as A/D, D/A, digital I/O, counter/timers, serial I/O, wired or wireless networking, image processing, GPS, etc. to their host systems.
GreenSpring Computers was a computer manufacturer founded in 1984 by Leonard and Henry Lehmann in Redwood City, California.
The Dell blade server products are built around their M1000e enclosure that can hold their server blades, an embedded EqualLogic iSCSI storage area network and I/O modules including Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand switches.
MicroTCA is a modular, open standard, created and maintained by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG). It provides the electrical, mechanical, thermal and management specifications to create a switched fabric computer system, using Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMC), connected directly to a backplane. MicroTCA is a descendant of the AdvancedTCA standard.
The computer-on-module for high performance compute (COM-HPC) form factor standard targets high I/O and computer performance levels. Each COM-HPC module integrates core CPU and memory functionality and input and output including USB up to Gen 4, audio, graphics, up to Gen. 5, and Ethernet up to 25 Gbit/s per lane. All I/O signals are mapped to two high density, high speed and low profile connectors on the bottom side of the module. COM-HPC employs a mezzanine-based approach. The COM modules plug into a carrier or base board that is typically customized to the application. Over time, the COM-HPC mezzanine modules can be upgraded to newer, backwards-compatible versions. COM-HPC targets Industrial, Military/Aerospace, Gaming, Medical, Transportation, IoT, and General Computing embedded applications and even scales up to RAM and performance hungry server or edge server applications.
The CRUVI FPGA Card is a daughter card standard specifically tailored to the needs of FPGAs.
