New PXI Express instruments and chassis - National Instruments

National Instruments announced the new PXI Express high-speed instruments and 18-slot PXI Express chassis. The new PXI Express instruments add to the wide range of PXI mixed-signal products from NI that include high-speed digitizers/oscilloscopes, high-speed digital I/O, baseband and RF analyzers and signal generators. The new instruments offer the enhanced functionality of high-speed data recording and playback using the latest industry-standard bus, PCI Express, which delivers up to 1 GB/s of bidirectional streaming throughput on a x4 PCI Express link.

About PCI Express and PXI Express
PCI Express is an evolution of the PCI bus that improves the data throughput of PCI by orders of magnitude. Similarly, PXI Express expands the PXI platform to increase data streaming up to 6 GB/s. With PXI Express, you can combine high-performance express modules with more than 1,500 PXI modules.

PXI Express technology is the latest addition to the PXI platform. The PXI Express Specification integrates PCI Express signaling into the PXI standard, which increases backplane bandwidth from 132 MB/s to 6 GB/s, a 45 times improvement. It also enhances PXI timing and synchronization features by incorporating a 100 MHz differential reference clock and differential triggers. The PXI Express specification adds these features to PXI while maintaining backward compatibility

The new modular instruments include the NI PXIe-5122 100 MS/s, 100 MHz dual-channel digitizer and the NI PXIe-6537 and NI PXIe-6536 50 MHz and 25 MHz 32-channel digital I/O modules. The NI PXIe-1065 18-slot chassis offers up to 1 GB/s per-slot dedicated bandwidth and a combination of both PXI and PXI Express slots. The new PXI Express products are ideal for applications such as signal intelligence, spectral monitoring, semiconductor chip characterization and video test.

Eric Starkloff, National Instruments, said:

PXI Express builds on commercial PCI Express technology to expand the applications served by the multivendor PXI standard…

The addition of high-speed data streaming capability to PXI, while preserving compatibility to the more than 1,200 existing PXI modules from more than 70 vendors, has made PXI a leading platform for modular instrumentation…

With the NI PXIe-5122 digitizer (based on a x4 PXI Express link), for example, engineers can capture high-speed analog signals on two simultaneous channels at 100 MS/s with 14-bit resolution and stream the signals across the PCI Express bus at the digitizer's full rate of 400 MB/s to the PC memory and/or hard disk. Engineers also can use the NI PXIe-6536/37 digital I/O modules (based on a x1 PXI Express link) to stream digital waveforms to and from the module at the full 200 MB/s data rate.

Inset: NI’s Modular Instruments
With NI’s modular instruments, engineers specify the essential functionality they require; choosing from a wide variety of measurement, signal generation, RF, power and switch modules; then configure those instruments in software for their specific measurement tasks. NI modular instruments are the building blocks for economical and versatile automated test systems. Because these instruments are modular and software-defined, they are quickly interchanged and easily repurposed to meet the challenge of evolving test needs. NI modular instruments are available on a variety of platforms including PXI, PXI Express, PCI, PCI Express and PCMCIA and provide the advantage of high-speed test execution by harnessing the power of industry-standard PC and advanced timing and synchronization technologies. The product family includes:

• Digitizers/oscilloscopes (up to 24 bits, up to 2 GS/s, up to eight channels)
• Digital waveform generator/analyzers (up to 400 Mb/s)
• Signal generators (up to 16 bits, 200 MS/s)
• RF signal generators and analyzers (up to 6.6 GHz)
• Programmable power supplies (up to 20 W, 16 bits)
• Digital multimeters (up to 7½ digits, LCR)
• Switching (multiplexers, matrices, general-purpose and RF)
• Dynamic signal analyzers (up to 24 bits, 500 kS/s)

The NI PXIe-1065 18-slot chassis complements the existing NI PXIe-1062 8-slot chassis to address higher-channel-density PXI Express-based systems. The new chassis includes a combination of PXI and PXI Express hybrid slots to accept a mix of both existing PXI modules and high-bandwidth PXI Express modules.

All of the new products integrate with a variety of software including the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, LabVIEW SignalExpress interactive measurement software and NI TestStand test management software.

Pricing:

NI PXIe-5122 digitizer priced from $5,499; €5,249; ¥766,000

NI PXIe-1065 18-slot chassis priced from $5,499; €5,249; ¥734,000

NI PXIe 6536/37 6 digital I/O modules priced from $1,799; €1,749; ¥251,000

Source: National Instruments PCI Express and PXI Express