Harnessing the power of multicore (continued)
A continuation of our interview with Dr. James Truchard, President and CEO of National Instruments, which appeared in the July 2008 Viewpoint column.
Larry Maloney -- Test & Measurement World, 6/25/2008 10:07:00 AM
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Q: How has the target audience for NI’s products changed over the last five years?
A: We continue to serve a very broad base of users, selling to approximately 25,000 different companies each year in virtually all disciplines and industries. Over the past five years, our customers have been using our tools to build more and more complex systems. These systems require tight integration of our software with high-performance modular hardware. For example, we are seeing very strong adoption of our tools in wireless test applications, as well as for validating very complex semiconductor devices.
Q: What are the common concerns and challenges that your target customers face?
A: Global markets have created more intense competition. Our customers consistently tell us that they are tasked to do more with less—to increase functionality and decrease their time to market while lowering costs. To meet these challenges, they must constantly be evaluating new technologies to optimize every aspect of their job. They also tell us that keeping up with the latest technologies is also a challenge.
Q: What are the advantages of software-defined instruments in meeting the challenges of the changing test environment?
A: Software-defined instruments can be redefined to adapt to changing requirements. For example, the explosion of wireless standards has made it difficult for engineers to keep up with new test requirements. Using general-purpose hardware and user-defined software, you can add the capability to test a new wireless standard by changing the software and reusing the existing acquisition and generation hardware.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) > has recognized the value of software-defined test systems and is driving the industry to align with this perspective through what they call “synthetic instrumentation.” The DoD estimates that it can save literally billions of dollars through this approach by eliminating the redundancy present in less flexible legacy test systems.
Q: How is National Instruments helping its customers cope with new wireless technologies and standards?
A: We’ve been working to deliver a tool that is capable of both prototyping next-generation standards and testing them. We have users, for example, who are emulating next-generation multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) standards using LabView and our hardware. This platform gives them the ability to rapidly develop their algorithms in LabView, test the real-world performance, and iterate on their design quickly.
In production test, as wireless becomes ubiquitous in so many industries, there has been a lot of pressure for test engineers to reduce the cost of test. Our focus has been on driving down the cost of wireless test through a software-defined platform that can be reconfigured to test any wireless standard.
Q: What factors have fueled NI’s long string of double-digit growth years?
A: Our platform, which combines software and hardware, has delivered strong benefits to our users:higher performance, lower cost, and increased productivity. We strive to innovate on top of commercial technologies, and the performance improvement in these technologies has driven the capability of our platform.
The PC, for example, has increased in performance by a factor of over 10,000 in the last 30 years, while also significantly decreasing in price. The PC is now central to automated test systems, not just for controlling instruments but for performing critical measurement analysis. For example, today we can perform over 700,000 1k fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) on an 8-core PC processor. This is incredible performance compared to even the best dedicated instrument.
Q: How does your business success relate to NI’s nine straight years on the Fortune 100 “Best Companies to Work For” list?
A: We founded the company to create great careers for ourselves and our employees, so this has always been central to what we do. We’ve been able to create a company built on innovation and a platform that has made our customers very successful. Our employees get a lot of inspiration from what our customers are able to accomplish with our products. From our focus on science and engineering education to our latest efforts in developing innovations for green technologies, we get a lot of motivation from seeing how our work helps solve key technological challenges.
Q: Much of NI’s success over the years can be attributed to continuous improvement in your central product, LabView. Is there another “killer ap” in NI’s future?
A: LabView continues to be very important to what we do, and its reach in the market has continued to increase. We have invested heavily in making LabView useful not just in automated test but also in prototyping and design.
This has long been the “holy grail” in electronics—a single tool that moves seamlessly from design to test. We are already seeing success in certain areas in bridging this gap and are committed to innovating to continue to bring design and test closer together.
Q: How big a challenge is it to transport your technology to engineers and scientists around the world?
A: Science and engineering, by their nature, have always been global. Researchers must be focused on where the leading-edge developments are happening around the world. So, our business has always been focused on serving users globally.
Our business outside the US has grown over the years, and in 2007 sales outside of the Americas accounted for approximately 55% of our revenue. Not surprisingly, with the increase in electronics production and design in Asia, that has been our fastest growing region over the past several years.
Read the first part of this interview.
