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The above examples show that software-centric and modular I/O hardware has gradually become a trend in the test and measurement instrument industry, and this is the virtual instrument technology (VI) that NI has been promoting. “This highlights the correctness of the road that NI has adhered to over the past 30 years.†NI China Marketing Manager Ms. Zhu Jun said in a meeting with industry media in Shanghai not long ago, “When NI introduced the concept of 'virtual instrument technology', many People think that it can't be mainstream technology. What we see today is that VI has not only become the development direction of the test and measurement industry, but it is clear that the test and measurement industry has entered the era of Instrumentation 2.0." Instrumenation 2.0 borrows the concept of the recent booming web 2.0, highlighting the user's strong control over data and the need for customization.
Software-centric, modular hardware combined
Adding as many new features as possible to the product in the shortest time seems to have become the biggest challenge facing electronic system design engineers. The test system must closely follow the development of the product technology to be tested, but the complexity of the system under test and the requirements for test time make the traditional test technology more and more difficult to meet the "excessive" test requirements. With traditional measuring instrument technology, engineers have only two options: either to develop a dedicated test solution for the product or to use a common test instrument. However, dedicated systems are expensive, and general-purpose instruments are difficult to meet test requirements.
"Compatible with the advantages of the above two solutions, software-centric systems have opened up a new era. This approach provides design and test engineers with the fastest and most cost-effective way to create their own custom instrumentation systems." Zhu Jun said, "It is Instrument Technology 2.0."
To put it simply, Instrument Technology 2.0 is relative to the 1.0 era of relying entirely on hardware to implement test measurements: in the latter case, the hardware itself and the analysis functions it has are defined by the instrument vendor. Implementing customization can only be a fantasy – even if the instrument is connected to a PC, the transmitted information is the manufacturer-defined test result, and the user cannot obtain the measured raw data for custom analysis. The 2.0 method is completely different. After obtaining real-time raw data, engineers can use software to design their own user interface and customize measurement tasks to obtain the required analysis results.
Software-centric does not mean that hardware is insignificant. Only high-quality digitization and fast transmission of data can truly achieve accurate analysis on the software platform. The rapid development of modular I/O hardware technology provides a reliable guarantee for data acquisition, and engineers can build test systems using common modular hardware. “Instrument Technology 2.0 gives them greater autonomy and flexibility than traditional instrumentation technology—on a powerful application platform, choosing the right hardware for more scalable test capabilities.†Zhu Jun said.
Zhu Jun said that Instrument Technology 2.0 includes the following essential elements: custom testing, real-time data transfer, custom interface, modular hardware, and connectivity between the instrument and the PC. "These elements are already very common." She pointed out that this is why other vendors mentioned at the beginning of this article have started to get involved in technologies such as software and PXI.
Components and essential elements
The concept of virtual instrument technology has been widely recognized and adopted in the market, and the factors driving its progress are still evolving. Therefore, of course, virtual instrument technology will continue to gain new leap: hardware, data converter (ADC), data bus / bus architecture and processor technology are indispensable; in terms of software, LabVIEW graphical programming environment has become increasingly The most common application tool.
First look at the ADC. In the past, engineers needed to design their own dedicated ASICs or off-the-shelf high-performance ADCs. But it is clear that the cost of ASIC solutions is higher for test and measurement industries with relatively small shipments. As ADCs continue to enter more applications, semiconductor vendors have seen tremendous growth in this technology. Today, ADC not only provides sufficient performance, but also achieves low cost advantages due to mass production.
Followed by bus technology. In fact, many bus technologies have "double high problems" - while providing high bandwidth, latency is also high. Unfortunately, the delays that are often overlooked in most cases have a direct effect on some test applications, affecting the speed of the instructions between the bus nodes. In addition, a variety of buses still have a variety of requirements. For example, Gigabit Ethernet has a high transfer speed, but every time you change it, you need to rewrite the software; GPIB doesn't have this kind of trouble, but you need to buy a controller... and so on. "This makes the PCI/PXI bus that excels in both bandwidth and latency easy to win." The widespread adoption of the PC industry has demonstrated the superiority of the technology." Zhu Jun said.
Multi-core processor technology is also a booster for instrument technology development. As the computing carrier of application software, the processor has become the core device of next-generation instrument technology. The competition between AMD and Intel's two major processor vendors has made processor performance steadily follow the pace of Moore's Law. Intel also announced plans to introduce an 80-core processor in 2011, which will provide terabytes of computing performance. Obviously, the future of the processor is multi-core.
Zhu Jun pointed out that compared with the 1.0 method, the instrument technology 2.0 method has very high requirements for software. In order to fully integrate the above hardware technologies, a powerful application software must meet the following requirements: Provide powerful analysis capabilities - including development connectivity between the built-in analysis library core and third-party software tools; allowing users to freely choose the most suitable requirements The bus - supporting a variety of bus technologies; in order to take full advantage of the advantages of multi-core processors - support engineers to efficiently program multi-core processors, the need to develop a new compiler to solve the development challenges of parallel architecture.
LabVIEW already has the above capabilities. Different from the characteristics of PLC configuration software and C text language, this is a graphical programming software platform. Since its introduction in 1986, LabVIEW has added an out-of-the-box analysis function that now includes more than 500 built-in math, signal processing, and analysis functions for order analysis, modulation, spectrum analysis, and advanced signal processing. Additional kits. In addition, with the m-file text syntax provided by MathScript, engineers can choose a more efficient syntax. The software not only supports all bus technologies and various operating systems, but also supports the Vista operating system in 8.2.1 released in April this year (LabVIEW can be configured at the bottom). In addition, on NI Days last year, NI also automatically configured two parallel programs into a dual-core processor for demonstration. Zhu Jun pointed out that almost all programming software is a serial architecture, and LabVIEW is a parallel architecture programming software. "If there are multiple parallel loops in the program, LabVIEW automatically assigns tasks among the multicores," she said. "From single-core to multi-core, users can enjoy the benefits of multi-core technology without changing the code."
“Although different industries have different development paths, the common point is that users are becoming more and more common in custom requirements.†Zhu Jun concluded, “Instrument Technology 2.0 has become an imperative trend in the test and measurement industry, with software. The core, combined with modular hardware solutions will enable engineers to achieve the customization and optimization results they need."
Some recent events in the test and measurement instrument market seem to imply that the industry has entered a new phase. The first thing to mention is Agilent Technologies. Although the company once thought that PXI was not the future trend of test and measurement technology, it launched two acquisitions (Acqiris and PXIT) for the technology solution provider at the end of last year. At the end of March, he announced his participation in the PXI Alliance. Also noteworthy is Tektronix, which, with the help of National Instruments, has adopted the interactive measurement software provided by NI in its TDS1000B, TDS2000B and DPO4000 series of digital storage oscilloscopes to help engineers easily on PCs. Connect and control the Tektronix instrument. In addition, test instrument supplier Ji Shili also followed the trend, and in December 2006 launched a product line that complies with the PXI standard.