Trends in test – the software advantage
12 February 2009
In the first of five instalments, National Instruments looks at trends in test. This month focuses on software-defined instrumentation.
The next year will be an opportunity for engineers and scientists to be innovative and do things differently. There is no doubt that the UK and the rest of the world are facing an economic headwind, with reduced budgets among other challenges. In the face of this, there remains the opportunity to rethink strategies and consider a change of approach, using different architectures and tools.
In the past, it has often been easier to buy the same familiar equipment, just because ‘that’s what we have always used.’ However, with less money available, we should stop and ask: ‘Is there another way that will be cheaper, more flexible and higher performance?’
Over the next five issues of Electronics Manufacture and Test, we will examine what can be done differently, by discussing key technologies and trends that are becoming increasingly important; software-defined instrumentation, parallel programming and multicore, FPGA-enabled instrumentation, the explosion of wireless, and protocol-aware test.
Growth of software-defined instrumentation
The adoption of software-defined instrumentation will allow engineers to tackle the need for flexibility in future test and measurement systems. Engineers are already using software-defined instrumentation to achieve new levels of measurement performance and lower test costs by applying the latest technological advancements, such as multicore processing and FPGAs, in their test systems, in order to meet the demands of new application areas, such as wireless and protocol-aware test. The rapid return on investment from these benefits is contributing significantly to the mainstream adoption of software-defined instrumentation.
Software-defined instruments, also known as virtual instruments, consist of modular hardware and user-defined software that give engineers the ability to combine standard and user-defined measurements with custom data processing using common hardware components. Using this flexibility has become critical as electronic devices, such as next-generation navigation systems and smart phones, integrate diverse capabilities and rapidly adopt new communication standards. Using software-defined instruments, engineers rapidly can reconfigure their test equipment by modifying software algorithms to meet changing test requirements. For example, optimising the test speed of a production system is often the best path to decreasing test costs. For other applications, reconfiguring a single tester to test multiple devices yields the best results. And in very complex testers, the capital cost may be the focus for cost reduction. For each of these situations, and in many others, the software-defined approach has proven time and time again to deliver dramatic improvements.
“The challenging world economy is forcing more companies to look at alternatives to their existing test engineering strategies,” said Eric Starkloff, Vice President of Product Marketing for Test at National Instruments. “More engineers than ever before are turning to software-defined instrumentation and the latest commercial technologies to achieve significant performance and flexibility gains while reducing their overall cost of test.”
Because of the flexibility and cost-effectiveness, thousands of companies are adopting software-defined instrumentation based on the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical programming platform and the open, multivendor PXI hardware standard. According to the PXI Systems Alliance, more than 100,000 PXI systems will be deployed by the end of 2009, and the number of deployed PXI systems is expected to double in the next decade.
“The open, modular architecture of software-defined instruments, such as those in PXI, have proven beneficial to a wide range of industries, and, as a result, PXI revenue in measurement and automation is expected to grow at 17.6% CAGR through to 2014,” said Jessy Cavazos, Test and Measurement Industry Manager at Frost & Sullivan.
Software, and in particular software-defined instrumentation, will continue to grow in importance for test and manufacturing, especially with the rapid adoption of multicore processors.
Next month looks at parallel programming.
Tristan Jones is Technical Marketing Team Leader for National Instruments UK & Ireland
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