The Elma Bustronic Dual Star MicroTCA backplane comes with 10 AMC, 2 power, and 2 MCH slots in the full size. The Dual Star backplane utilizes the compression style connector.

MicroTCA was developed as an "ATCA Lite", for applications where AdvancedTCA may be overkill. It reduces size and cost by eliminating the ATCA carrier, enabling AMC modules to be plugged directly into the backplane. MicroTCA provides scaleable bandwidth from 1-40 Gbit/sec, and scaleable availability ranging from three nines (99.9%) to five nines uptime (99.999%).

The MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH) provides interconnect, power conversion, clock distribution, and system management functionality needed to support up to 12 AMC modules. The high performance of MicroTCA coupled with its compact size, low cost and low power consumption make it a good fit for wireless base stations, digital loop carriers, optical ADMs, enterprise networking, storage servers, non-rugged Mil/Aero communications, and many other applications. (More)