MISC-TN-002: The scalability of the Axel family: a real-world example

Info Box Applies to Axel Lite Applies to AXEL ULite

HistoryEdit

Version	Date	Notes
1.0.0	December 2017	First release

IntroductionEdit

One of the most appreciated characteristics of the Axel family is the scalability in terms of performances and feature set. This technical note illustrates a real-world example in which this scalability was heavily exploited by DAVE Embedded Systems to produce an entire family of products originated from a common hardware project and sharing a unified software development environment. All of this allowed our customer to reduce dramatically the time-to-market and to limit the software maintenance costs.

The hardware platformEdit

The following image depicts the simplified block diagram of the hardware platform.

caption

It was designed around the system-on-module, indicated as SOM in the picture. As stated before, the range of the SOMs fitting this application is considerable. It embraces both the compact AXEL ULite class of products and the more powerful AxelLite class.

Thanks to the substantial pinout and form factor compatibility, the hardware design team managed to conceive a "one-size-fits-all" solution. In other words, a single carrier board able to host all the SOMs selected to implement the different products.