The global market for merchant mezzanine/daughter cards will grow 13.3 percent annually through 2010 off the strength of several new form factors, say analysts at market researcher Venture Development Corp. (VDC) in Natick, Mass.

Global 2005 sales of mezzanine cards and carriers were $355.7 million, which will grow by more than 87 percent by 2010 reaching $667 million, according to the VDC report, Merchant Computer Boards for Embedded/Real-Time Applications (MCBREA), 14th Edition.

The mezzanine market’s healthy growth is due to the new AMC form factor as well as the PMC form factor, whose new switch fabric-enabled architecture-XMC-will experience rapid growth, VDC analysts say.

AMC cards will see widespread use in communications on ATCA carrier boards as well as in MicroTCA systems in use across a wide array of applications and vertical markets, VDC analysts predict.

PMC, on the other hand, will see growth fueled by applications such as industrial, medical, and transportation, as well as in military and aerospace applications where XMC will be heavily used in the future.

The most direct point of competition between the AMC and PMC architectures will occur in communications applications previously using PMC modules that may in the future shift over to AMC cards as ATCA carriers become more ubiquitous.

There will be added indirect competition as MicroTCA systems-which use AMCs similar to blades and plug directly into the MicroTCA chassis-threaten to replace larger slot card architectures that make use of PMC modules.

For more information contact VDC online at www.vdc-corp.com.