Is AXIe really here to stay?
29 November 2010
Recently, my colleague Tim Fryer introduced us to ‘the new kid on the XI block’ (Introducing AXIe – the next test in town!). We received a lot of correspondence about this, so I met National Instruments’ Luke Schreier to find out more.
As the company’s Product Marketing Group Manager for Automated Test, Schreier was more than qualified to answer the questions I had.
We started off by talking about the needs of the military and defence sectors and how longevity has led to a reliance on VXI, then discussed the significance of ATCA, and then PXI in military applications being designed in for inter-operability. So when designs are renewed, this means that PXI is a natural step from VXI, but what about AXIe? Would it be feasible for the military sector to effectively ‘jump’ the PXI step and move straight over to the new standard?
In some ways, AXIe could be argued to be somewhat of a backwards step. In terms of card size it’s physically larger than PXI, so perhaps it does have applications in the military sector and the military sector alone. If that is its future though, there’s concerns that AXIe will turn into a ‘niche’ standard and will be largely ignored by everyone else. Besides, as both PXI and AXIe can be used for semiconductor test, is there a need to transfer to the newer standard?
According to Larry Desjardin, interviewed by Tim Fryer, “One of the key things that you see right away is just the board size, but there are other things as well - the whole timing, triggering, synchronisation type buses that we have added are really state-of-the-art. We have been able to demonstrate very low jitter in standard clock. I think we are demonstrating 12 ps rms of jitter - this is world-class backplane type standard.”
There is of course a possibility that AXIe could be improved and adapted. Indeed, turn back the clock and think about RF; a real proof point for PXI. When PXI was fresh out some 13 years ago, RF testing wasn’t feasible, but now that hurdle has been overcome and PXI has shown itself to be more than capable for this automated wireless test.
And PXI has now integrated itself into numerous sectors and industries, such as sonar for medical and smartgrids for energy, as well as the CERN project; PXI is not going to go away overnight. And in many ways it lives on, as AXIe is an open standard based on ATCA that uses existing standards from AdvancedTCA, PXI, LXI, and IVI.
So where does this leave the industry? It’s natural to look at something new and consider it to be the future, but PXI’s role will remain undiminished on account of its wide user base and equipment set. AXIe is really going to appeal to markets that require performance levels that PXI, and even PXIe, could not satisfy. A plus point of AXIe is claimed to be its higher performance per rack inch, as well as it’s easy integration with PXI, LXI and IVI, naturally. NI’s stance is that it will support AXIe for software, but as for building instruments? Well, that all depends upon customer demand.
What are your thoughts on this? Send an email to paul.wolfe@imlgroup.co.uk to let me know.
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