boardaddress

Boardaddress is a term used in hardware design and embedded systems to denote the identifier or location of a board within a larger system, such as a backplane, modular enclosure, or networked device. It is not a formal standard, but appears in documentation and code as a concise way to reference a specific board among several in the same system.

In practice, a boardaddress serves as a routing key. On backplanes or in multi-board deployments, software and firmware use the boardaddress to select the correct board for a command, data transfer, or status inquiry. This can be realized as a numeric bus address, a slot-and-board label, or an alphanumeric identifier, depending on the architecture. Common representations include simple integers (for example 0–255), strings like B1 or SLOT2-B1, or composite addresses that combine location and type.

In software, a boardaddress may appear in message headers, configuration files, or device trees to direct input/output handling to the appropriate board driver or handler. In hardware descriptions, it may correspond to a physical or logical address on a backplane or expansion bus.

Security and reliability considerations include safeguarding boardaddress values to prevent topology disclosure and misrouting, validating addresses on receipt, and providing consistent addressing schemes across firmware updates.

See also: I2C address, CAN bus node ID, Modbus unit identifier, device address, backplane, expansion bus.