Little PXI: All grown up
C.G. Masi, Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 9/1/2004
When I first saw a PXI module, I thought: "Gee, that's a cute little data-acquisition platform."
It was like a miniature VXI system. Almost a toy. I couldn't see it taking on VXI, which at the time was the 800-lb gorilla of the ATE world.
VXI was a tad under 10 years old and had earned its position as the nonproprietary ATE format. Sure, VXI was expensive, but ATE users had big bucks, right? Sure, it was as big as an apartment-sized refrigerator, but you could almost hang a side of beef in proprietary ATE instrument bays. Who needed a little instrumentation format based on CompactPCI, anyway?
As the hillbilly said: "Ah shudda nowd bettur!"
I had seen the phenomenon before. Advancing electronics technologies always end up packing more function and performance into smaller packages. Cheaper is always better than more expensive. And, people always flock to the better mousetrap.
Clearly, PXI has grown up. Not physically—it's still a fraction of the size of a full-out VXI mainframe—but in terms of test capability and marketing clout. The wide selection of PXI instrument modules means you can populate a PXI chassis with enough test and measurement capability to perform almost any task.
The engineers building the systems profiled in this Test Report found that PXI could do what they wanted done, and do it better and at a lower cost than competing formats. Perhaps you should consider PXI for your next ATE system.
Contact C.G. Masi at editor@tmworld.com.
