NI eyes system design: partners with tek and TI; prepares LabVIEW FPGA

Electronic News, August 19, 2002 by Jeff Chappell

AUSTIN--National Instruments Corp. plans to move beyond its role as a measurement and instrument control and automation supplier and begin playing a larger role in automated test and system design.

In addition to introducing new products this week that are designed to make the PXI instrument standard more pervasive, it wants to move its signature product, the Lab VIEW software package for graphical development of test and measurement, and move its presence up through the design chain.

"Now this isn't a new thing LabVIEW is doing," NI President, CEO and co-founder James Truchard told editors and analysts last week here at NI Week. NI Week is the company's annual customer event, exposition and analyst/investor meeting.

LabVIEW has been used for design activity since its inception, Truchard said. "Now we're just formalizing it, addressing the needs of that [design] community," he said.

To do that, NI recently announced partnerships with Texas Instruments Inc. and Tektronix Inc. and is looking to customers to beta test a new version of LabVIEW in the works called Lab VIEW FPGA.

NI and TI are planning to integrate LabVIEW with TI's Code Composer Studio development tools to create tests that identify design flaws before prototype fabrication of DSP systems. Meanwhile, NI and Tek are loading permanent Lab VIEW applications geared for design engineers on all of Tek's high-speed, open Windows-based oscilloscopes, which include the TDS5000 series, TDS6604 and TDS/CSA 7000 and 8000 series scopes. The Tek instruments will also feature a fully operational, 30-day trial version of Lab VIEW.

"We see this as an important step forward for interoperability with different development environments," Truchard said.

Part of the original vision for LabVIEW was to someday have it embedded on actual instruments, said NI co-founder and LabVIEW author Jeff Kodosky. By having them embedded on Tek's PC-based digital scopes, it will further expose NI's software capabilities to system designers, added John Graff, VP of marketing for NI.

"From the Tektronix point of view, we're just as excited about it," said Colin Shepard, VP and general manager of Tek's oscilloscope line. With Lab VIEW present, it will make it easier for engineers to view, manipulate and export data, improving their productivity, he said.

As for LabVIEW FPGA, there are already a few customers using a beta version of the software, and NI plans a full release some time next year. "We believe this is a very important future for the input/output and NI," Truchard said.

NI Sets PXI Sights on RF Apps

NI also last week unveiled a 2.7GHz RF signal analyzer with greater than 80dB dynamic range as well as PXI-based digital multimeter (DMM). The NI PXI-5660 signal analyzer marks the company's first significant foray into RE test and measurement.

"This is obviously a huge leap for us," said Ed Kruft, marketing manager for NI's computer-based instruments. The three-slot module for the PXI architecture platform took more than four years to develop, he said.

NI has tooled the 5660 to be the basis of PXI-based automated test platforms, according to the company. The logic behind M's move into this space is twofold, Kruft said. First is the pervasiveness of RE applications in everything from military applications to consumer products. Second, PM, as an instrument platform, has to be able to take advantage of that pervasiveness.

PXI is a PC-based, modular, open-instrument platform standard developed originally by NI, which saw it as a successor to the VXI instrument platform. The NI PXI-5660 consists of a broadband RE down converter--the NI PXI 5600, introduced last year-coupled with a high-spectral purity IF digitizer and the Spectral Measurements Toolkit (SMT) that can be used in conjunction with NI's LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI software packages. The broadband RE front end acquires signals between 9KHz and 2.7GHz with up to 20MHz real-time bandwidth and has an onboard ultra-high-stability oven-controlled oscillator to provide the frequency accuracy and stability required for automated applications, NI said. The unit features a spurious free dynamic range of greater than 80dB.

NI's other PXI instrument unveiled here, the PXI 4070 Flex DMM, is a 6-and-a-half digit, single-slot PXI module with features that include a sampling rate of 1.8 megasamples per second, a fully isolated digitizer mode, self-calibratio and offset compensated ohms measurement.

The market for DMMs is the single-largest instrument market in the world, and most DMMs come from proprietary instrument makers. Thus it was an obvious target market for NI and the PXI platform, said NI's Kruft. Like the RF module, NI hopes its PXI DMM will drive customers to switch to the PXI standard.

"What's the number one thing that's going to drive people to PXI? They'd say a 6-and-a-half digit DMM," Kruft said of NI's customer surveys.

The 4070 FLEX DMM will also soon feature a digitizer mode, which NI plans to roll out in a few months.