NIWOT, CO /Marketwired/ -- Two new vendors of AXIe products, Elma Electronic and Hiller Measurements, announced powerful development tools for the AXIe modular instrument standard. The tools are designed to help vendors and system integrators quickly develop and deploy AXIe instruments and systems.
AXIe is a standard based on AdvancedTCA (ATCA), with extensions for instrumentation and test. Often referred to as the "big brother of PXI," AXIe delivers PXI compatibility through its use of PCI Express, while the large format board envelope offers increased power, cooling, and circuit density. It is often deployed alongside PXI or traditional instruments in a compact horizontal chassis.
"Until now, developers who wished to take advantage of AXIe capabilities faced significant development hurdles and a steep learning curve," said Von Campbell, Chairman of the AXIe Consortium. "With the tools and products coming from Elma Electronic and Hiller Measurements, vendors and users can now focus on their unique circuitry and software, as much of the platform engineering is taken care of for them."
Elma Electronic, a well-known vendor of ATCA products and platforms, is now offering AXIe products. For chassis developers, Elma Electronic has developed an AXIe intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) Shelf Manager card with redundant intelligent platform management bus (IPMB). The shelf manager's system monitoring features include power management, cooling control, event sensor logging, electronic keying, and module hot-swap monitoring.
For module developers, Elma has developed an IPMI controller mezzanine card that fits onto a standard AXIe or AdvancedTCA-based (ATCA-based) module. This card allows users to quickly deploy the required IPMI functionality, freeing their engineers to focus on the unique added value of their designs.
"IPMI and IPMB bring robust management capabilities to AXIe and AdvancedTCA, but developers shouldn't have to become IPMI experts to implements their designs," said Ram Rajan, V.P. of Engineering for Elma. "With our expanding set of AXIe products and tools, they won't have to, and can therefore focus on delivering value to their customers."
For AXIe module developers requiring a more turnkey development environment, Hiller Measurements is releasing the MiAXIe AXIe development system. Similar to their MiPXIe system, the product provides the hardware and software interfaces for an AXIe module that can be quickly adapted to a customer's application. In its initial release, Hiller Measurements offers the MiAXIe system as a design service, with a standard hardware development kit scheduled for release in 2014.
Jeff Olsen, V.P. of Sales & Marketing at Hiller Measurements, notes the importance of this capability in aerospace and defense applications. "The recent introductions of high-fidelity AXIe sources and receivers highlight the need for a flexible development environment to accommodate custom signal conditioning and up/down conversion. Similarly, legacy systems fielded in VXI can be ported to AXIe to address obsolescence in a cost-effective and low-risk fashion. MiAXIe is the ideal approach to address these needs."
The development tools from both companies are expected to be available in autumn of 2013.
About AXIe
The AXIe Consortium is an instrumentation standard based on AdvancedTCA (ATCA) with extensions for instrumentation and test. The mission of the AXIe Consortium is to provide an open standard that creates a robust ecosystem of components, products and systems for general purpose instrumentation and semiconductor test. AXIe leverages existing standards from PXI, LXI and IVI. AXIe promises high scalability and performance that will address a range of platforms including ATE systems, rack-and-stack modular, bench top, and module plug-ins.
AXIe Consortium membership is open to all vendors who agree with the stated goals and intend to provide solutions to the marketplace.
Trademarks
AdvancedTCA and PICMG are registered trademarks of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group. AXIe, PXI, LXI, and IVI are registered trademarks of the AXIe Consortium, PXI Systems Alliance, LXI Consortium, and IVI Foundation.The