A tribal solution

All engineers are members of the Whatif tribe, so named because, if you show them anything, their first response is “Whatif we changed this, so that . . .” The tribe’s approach has its good and bad points — from it comes a lot of original and useful new things, but because separate clans design those new things, they are often incompatible. Fortunately, the tribe has also noted this fact and asked “Whatif”; their answer is standards.

A recent case in point involves the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture. AdvancedTCA has proven popular among many Whatif clans, and those clans particularly those involved in test have been adding modifications to enhance performance for their needs. So last November in Germany, the Aeroflex, Agilent Technologies, and Test Evolution clans proposed a new standard — AdvancedTCA Extensions for Instrumentation and Test, or AXIe — and it leverages not only PXIe work, but brings in LXI and IVI as well to maintain compatibility with these popular test extensions.

Larry Desjardin, the GM for Agilent Technologies’ Modular Product Operation whose was instrumental in forming the AXIe Consortium, notes that “AXIe is the first modular standard that addresses rack mounted systems by explicitly matching the orientation of a rack: horizontal. The simple genius behind this is that high-performance instruments can be delivered on a large board size, but take up very little rack height . .. Of course, large ATE systems can use vertical AXIe configurations . . .” Lev Alperovich, President and CEO of Test Evolution Corporation adds, “AXIe removes the division between instruments and systems…which will lower costs throughout general-purpose and semiconductor test.”

If you’re a member of the Whatif tribe with an interest in test, contact the consortium at http://www.axiestandard.org/.

Richard Comerfordrcomerford@hearst.com

AXIe leverages not only PXIe work, but brings in LXI and IVI as well.