MICTOR explained

MICTOR is an acronym for Matched Impedance ConnecTOR, a product line of vertical board to board connectors. Produced by TE Connectivity, they are attached to printed circuit boards using surface-mount technology.^[1] They can be used for probing boards.

Usage

MICTOR are used in HP and Tektronix logic analyzers.^[2] Connectors can be used even for very-high frequency applications, up to 100-ps rise time.^[3]

Some of Mictor signals can be used for JTAG, e.g. in FPGA debugging variants of the connector.^[4] Along with JTAG, Mictor connectors can also carry hardware trace signals like ARM CoreSight ETM (Embedded Trace Macrocell) or PTM (Program Trace Macrocell).^[5]

Variants

Minimal variant of MICTOR consists of 38 signal positions; larger variants are designed up to 266 signals (with 38 increments). Connector is usually surface mounted.

See also

• Berg connector

Notes and References

1. https://www.te.com/usa-en/products/connectors/pcb-connectors/board-to-board-connectors/intersection/mictor-connectors.html?tab=pgp-story TE Connectivity (TE) MICTOR Connectors
2. Jack G. Ganssle, The Art of Designing Embedded Systems, page 158
3. https://books.google.com/books?id=rloAlGwA5-cC&pg=PT469 Microelectronics Packaging Handbook: Subsystem packaging
4. http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/rts/docs/Xilinx-datasource-2003-q1/Xcell%20Journal%20Articles/xcell_pdfs/xc_debug44.pdf Deep Memory Yields Effective In-System Debugging
5. http://www2.lauterbach.com/pdf/app_arm_jtag.pdf Lauterbach's ARM Connector Specification