Test and measurement instrument technology begins to enter the 2.0 era

Some recent events in the test and measurement instrument market seem to suggest 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, but it launched two acquisitions (Acqiris and PXIT) for the technology solution provider at the end of 2006, and in 2007 The PXI Alliance was announced at the end of March.

Also worthy of note is Tektronix. With the assistance of National Instruments, this oscilloscope leader used the interactive measurement software provided by NI in its TDS1000B, TDS2000B, and DPO4000 series digital storage oscilloscopes to help engineers easily work on the PC. Connect and control the Tektronix instrument. In addition, test equipment supplier Keithley also complied with the trend, in December 2006 launched a line of products that meet the PXI standard.

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 exactly the virtual instrument technology (VI) that NI has been promoting. “This shows the correctness of the path that NI has followed for 30 years.” Ms. Zhu Jun, NI China Marketing Manager, met with industry media in Shanghai and said, “When NI proposed the concept of 'virtual instrument technology', many people were We don't think it can be a mainstream technology, but what we see today is that VI has not only become the direction of development of the test and measurement industry, but also obviously, the test and measurement industry has entered the era of Instrumentation 2.0."

Instrumenation 2.0 borrows the notion of web 2.0, which has been very popular recently, and highlights the user's control of data and the strong demand for customization.

With software as the center, modular hardware has added as many new features to the product as possible in the shortest possible time, which seems to have become the biggest challenge facing electronic systems design engineers. The test system must closely follow the development of the product technology to be tested, but the increased complexity of the system under test and the requirement for test time make traditional test technologies increasingly incapable of satisfying “excessive” test requirements. With traditional measuring instrument technology, engineers have only two options: either develop a dedicated test solution for the product or use a universal test instrument. However, proprietary systems are expensive, and general-purpose instruments are difficult to meet test requirements.