National Instruments Offers Industry's First PCI Express Image Acquisition Board

Business Wire, Oct 19, 2004

AUSTIN, Texas -- New NI PCIe-1429 Image Acquisition Board Acquires up to 680 MB/s with Any Camera Link Camera

National Instruments (Nasdaq:NATI) today announced the industry's first PCI Express-based image acquisition board for high-throughput vision applications. With the NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board, engineers and scientists now can acquire images at the highest speeds, resolutions and bit depths available for Camera Link cameras to perform demanding imaging applications such as synchronized data and image acquisition, fault analysis and advanced motion tracking.

In the past, engineers and scientists performing high-speed imaging applications were confined to devices with banks of expensive onboard memory, which could only acquire images for short periods of time, or specialized buses such as the PCI 64/66 or PCI-X, which are not supported by standard PC chipsets. With the introduction of PCI Express technology by Intel and the NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board, these engineers and scientists now can acquire high-speed data indefinitely through a standard PC bus.

"With the NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board, our customers can continually capture all of the data coming from our new, high-performance MegaPlus II cameras," said Jay Kelbley, product manager at Redlake MASD, a provider of high-resolution, high-speed digital cameras. "In the coming years, we expect NI to continue to lead the way as PCI Express becomes the standard for PC-based vision applications."

Each NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board includes one trigger line and two Camera Link connectors to support any base-, medium- or full-configuration Camera Link camera. Additional I/O lines for advanced triggering, pulse-train outputs and isolated digital I/O also are available. With the board's four-lane PCI Express configuration, engineers and scientists can acquire at the full Camera Link bandwidth of 680 MB/s. In addition, they can synchronize other data acquisition measurements with each acquired image to analyze activities frame by frame in data-intensive applications such as crash tests.

The NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board is ideal for many industrial, life science and biomedical imaging applications. For instance, engineers and scientists can use the board to perform fault analysis by setting up a stop trigger to record images before and after an event on the factory floor. Also, they can use high-speed imaging to perform particle image velocimetry or track the movement intricacies in gait analysis. In addition, scientists can use the new board to measure the stimulus response of eye corneas to light or analyze heart valve behavior under pathologic cardiovascular conditions.

PCI Express is a high-performance, point-to-point serial interconnect that improves PCI by providing scalable bus bandwidth. PCI Express features a layered model that offers backward compatibility with existing PCI applications at the operating system level. In September, NI announced the NI PCIe-GPIB controller, the first GPIB controller for PCI Express. The NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board will be available in January 2005.

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation -- a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging the PC and its related technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular hardware, such as PXI modules for data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,100 employees and direct operations in 41 countries. In 2003, the company sold products to more than 25,000 companies in 90 countries. For the past five years, FORTUNE magazine named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

Readers may obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling 512-683-5090, by sending e-mail to nati@ni.com or by visiting www.ni.com/nati.>

Pricing and Contact Information

NI PCIe-1429 image acquisition board
Priced from $2,495
Web: www.ni.com/vision

11500 N Mopac Expwy, Austin, Texas 78759-3504
Tel: 800-258-7022, Fax: 512-683-9300
E-mail: info@ni.com

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