AXIe Standard

The AXIe consortium and hence also the AXIe standard were not established until November 6th, 2009 by the founding members Aeroflex Corporation, Agilent Technologies (today: Keysight Technologies) and Test Evolution Corporation; meanwhile, it has grown to 11 member companies.

The intention of the consortium members was for the AXIe standard to combine the potential of the ATCA, LXI, PXI and IVI standards in an optimum manner.  In addition, it was meant to support customized add-ons as well as extensions to incorporate a variety of different test and measurement technologies.

Therefore, a number of (sub-)specifications have been stipulated:

• AXIe-0: Low cost instrumentation and switching architecture
• AXIe-1 Rev. 2.0: Base architecture (for common applications)
• AXIe-2.0: Basic software specification
• AXIe-3.1: for semiconductor test expansions
• AXIe Wide PCI Express

Beginning in the fall of 2010, the first devices under the newly established standard were introduced to the market. Meanwhile, their number has risen to double digits, the majority of which implement the base architecture specification.

The basic concept of this new idea is the possible integration of existing PXI, LXI or IVI hardware. The foundation for this is the ATCA-PICMG 3.0 standard.

This could make AXIe a good complement for LXI and/or PXI instrumentation. The development costs for AXIe systems can be minimized when the existing LXI and PXI system configuration can be retained.

Updated: July 2015