PXISA is keeping up the momentum

Matthew Friedman says that the PXISA has been seeing very aggressive movement of test vendors into PXI.

By Richard Quinnell, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 11/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Matthew Friedman Board Member, PXISA Senior Product Manager, National Instruments Read more articles from the November PXI Test Report.

According to the PXISA (PXI Systems Alliance), the industry passed a major milestone earlier this year: More than 100,000 systems have been developed since the PXI standard was released in 1997, with more than 600,000 modules shipped. I spoke with PXISA board member Matthew Friedman of National Instruments, who is also the PXISA marketing co-chairman, to discuss what will keep PXI growing toward that next 100k.

Q. What does achieving this milestone say about PXI?
A. Achieving this milestone is an indicator that PXI is the proven standard for automated test. Another indicator is PXI's presence at this year's Autotestcon [September 13–16, Orlando, FL]. PXI first appeared at the show 12 years ago; this year, the majority of the show's vendors were either PXISA members or PXI customers. Also, we've been seeing very aggressive movement of test vendors into PXI. Seven new members have joined PXISA, many of which were traditional ATE or VXI vendors. As a result of all this, we expect that 2011 will be the strongest year ever for PXI as it continues its substantial growth.

Q. How has the PXISA encouraged this growth?
A. The PXISA has been doing a lot of work in emerging markets such as China. We've held several Technology and Application Conferences in Taiwan and China that have been very heavily attended. Several Chinese companies have already joined the PXISA, including Beijing Aerospace Measurement and Control. Also, the PXISA technical committees are continuing to evolve the standard to take advantage of the latest technologies. The most recent example is the PXImc multicomputing specification, which will enable even higher-performance computing and data-streaming capabilities.

Q. When can readers expect PXImc hardware to become available?
A. It's a new technology, and the technical committee just completed work to ensure all components are in place for vendors to begin releasing products. The hardware and software specifications were made available in late 2009, but equipment has been waiting for a final piece—the shared software component that helps ensure interoperability among boards. That software component was finalized in August and is now available to all PXISA members. Prototypes of PXImc are already being demonstrated. For example, at this year's NIWeek [August 3–5, Austin, TX], we featured a working PXImc system with four interconnected servers attaining 50 GFLOPS and 600-Mbyte/s sustained data rates.

Q. What trends do you see in PXI for the coming years?
A. Beyond the new computing capabilities enabled with PXImc, we will continue to see higher-performance RF measurement capabilities. This is evident in the new multichannel architectures enabled by PXI and as modules reach new frequency ranges. You will also see new levels of instrument programmability as users will be able to go beyond the driver level and reconfigure the instrument's FPGA to meet their exact measurement need.

Q. How do new emerging standards such as AXIe fit in?
A. AXIe borrows many elements from PXI, which further validates PXI's architecture, but it is hard to see just where AXIe will fit. The trend in instruments is toward smaller form factors and lower power, because as technology evolves, we're getting more into less space while using less power. While some applications may need the large size that AXIe offers, we still see PXI remaining the dominant standard for automated test.