PXI – relevant, reliable and still growing
09 February 2009
For a number of years now I have taken a look at the evolving world of PXI. Unlike many other protocols I would be surprised if the growth in PXI did anything but continue at its current impressive rate. Why is this?
The principal reason is the ever growing speed and power of the average PC, the building block of a PXI test system. The PC can now be at the heart of test systems that previously needed dedicated, industrial grade computing solutions. PXI is becoming the platform of choice for manufacturing test for a number of reasons, but rather than muddle through these reasons myself, I will hand this comment over to Loofie Gutterman who is President of the PXI Systems Alliance – an Alliance we work closely with in preparing our annual PXI update. The rest of this weeks issue of EMTww has been given over to all matters PXI, and we start with Loofie’s introduction:
PXI’s second decade
PXI has now entered its second decade as an established Test and Measurement platform standard. It was in August of 1997, when the PXI Specification, Revision 1.0 was released and since that time we have seen the specification updated and enhanced to include a PXI software specification, the adoption of VISA to support PXI and most recently the addition of PXI Express as part of the PXI standard. This on-going activity is a clear indication of the health and robustness of the PXI platform. And even now, there is on-going work within the PXI technical working group to investigate further enhancements and capabilities for the PXI platform which demonstrates both a commitment by PXI members to the standard and the flexibility of the standard to adapt to new test requirements. Clearly this is a standard built for the long-haul.
But what is equally important and impressive is the broad acceptance of PXI in the market place. Recent PXI market data indicates that currently, there are well over 50,000 PXI systems deployed today with this number projected to grow to over 100,000 systems by the end of 2009. And just as remarkable, this 10+ year standard continues to experience double digit market growth of 17.6% through 2014 which makes it one of the most popular and pervasive test platforms in the industry. The adoption and success of the PXI platform can be attributed to several factors, but probably most importantly, PXI has not strayed from its original goal of building on industry standards (the PC), leveraging the compact and high density features of CompactPCI, and promoting interoperability with established T&M software and hardware standards. These features and capabilities have served the standard well and have resulted in over 1500 PXI products being offered today by 59 PXI vendors. With this broad range of products and suppliers, one can find applications for PXI in almost any functional or data acquisition segment of the market place.
So what can we expect from PXI as it enters its second decade? One likely area of growth for PXI will be in the system replacement segment. We can expect PXI to take the place of its bigger and older brother – VXI, a modular platform that is now entering its third decade. With the availability of PXI products including digital, RF, analogue, and switching; PXI is fully capable of replacing legacy VXI systems with smaller, higher performance functional test platforms for both the commercial and military market sectors. And since PXI retains many of the card modular features and system interface concepts used with VXI, transitioning to PXI is easy.
One can also expect to see PXI find its way into a broader range of functional test applications including component test and portable test applications. With PXI’s high performance bus and the availability of cost effective, high performance digital and analogue instrumentation, PXI is a natural choice for building or augmenting component / device test systems. And on the opposite end of the functional test spectrum, you can expect to see PXI penetrate the portable or field test market – supplanting proprietary and closed architecture platforms with configurable platforms that can be easily tailored for specific applications. With new applications and products everyday, PXI has plenty of momentum and growth for its second decade.
PXI Systems Alliance
www.PXISA.org
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