Modular instruments make real the promise of PXI Express

Modular instruments make real the promise of PXI Express

It’s one thing to define a high-speed bus with special extensions to accommodate test needs, and it’s quite another to make it a reality — one that actually delivers on the promise of improved performance. But that’s what the NI PXIe family of chassis, controllers, and instrument modules (see Electronic Products , July 2007, p. 98), does, and it was also the first to hit the market as a usable system.

In May, the first high-speed instruments — the PXIe-5122 100 Msample/s 100-MHz digitizer and PXIe-6537/6536 digital I/O modules — began shipping, along with an 18-slot chassis with up to 1-Gbyte/s dedicated bandwidth on each slot. The modules were able to upload and download at full speed, so the bus didn’t get in the way of performance. These initial introductions have been followed by the PXIe-5442 16-bit arb generator and the PXIe-5672 RF vector signal generator. Thanks to all these introductions, making high-data-rate measurements doesn’t mean having to wait for the bus.

National Instruments
Austin , TX
Ernest Martinez 800-258-7022

http://www.ni.com