Editor's note: Autotestcon showcased integration

Greg Reed, Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 11/1/2004

Test integration emerged as a common theme during the IEEE's 2004 Autotestcon conference (September 20–23, San Antonio, TX). Integration among various test technologies, across several test standards, and between commercial and military endeavors, is progressing at a brisk clip.

In his keynote address, Brigadier General Charles W. Fletcher stressed integration among logistics suppliers and systems to deliver materials through a "platform readiness" framework. At the plenary session, integration of PXI, VXI, PCI, LXI and other industry test standards came under scrutiny by a panel of experts. One conclusion: Government is sponsoring industry consortia to address standards—yet another level of integration.

On the exhibit floor, vendors continued the integration theme in product demonstrations. Frequent refrains extolled the virtues of integrating around existing test system architectures while maximizing PXI, VXI, PCI, USB, and GPIB buses. In the conference rooms, several sessions focused on instrument interchangeability and test program set transportability. Integration was featured by speakers on topics such as automated test systems, common test interfaces, automatic test markup language, parallel testing, interchangeable virtual instruments, virtual instrument software architecture, and plug-and-play drivers.

While industry forces conspire to drive integration, military readiness provided the accelerator in San Antonio.

Contact Greg Reed at editor@aatr.net.