'Top trends' in test and measure

National Instruments has identified three trends — software-defined instrumentation, parallel processing technologies and new methods for wireless and semiconductor test — that will improve the efficiency of test and measurement systems in 2009.

These trends will help engineers develop faster and more flexible automated test systems while reducing their overall costs.

The adoption of software-defined instrumentation is the most significant trend in test and measurement for this year. Engineers are using software-defined instrumentation to achieve new levels of measurement performance and lower test costs by applying the latest technological advancements such as multicore processing and field-programmable gate arrays in their test systems to meet the demands of new application areas such as wireless and protocol-aware test.

Software-defined instruments, also known as virtual instruments, consist of modular hardware and user-defined software that allow engineers to combine standard and user-defined measurements with custom data processing using common hardware components.

This flexibility has become critical as electronic devices such as next-generation navigation systems and smart phones integrate diverse capabilities and rapidly adopt new communication standards.

Because of the flexibility and cost-effectiveness, thousands of companies are adopting software-defined instrumentation based on the graphical platform and the open, multivendor PXI hardware standard.

According to the PXI Systems Alliance, more than 100,000 PXI systems will be deployed by the end of 2009, and the number of deployed PXI systems is expected to double in the next decade.

Multicore technology has become a standard feature in automated test systems. Software-defined instrumentation takes advantage of the latest multicore processors and high-speed bus technologies to generate, capture, analyse and process the gigabytes of data required to properly design and test electronic devices.

Test engineers can use parallel programming, which automatically distributes multithreaded applications across multiple computing cores.

Another area of growth for software-defined instrumentation is the increase in system-level tools for FPGAs. Many modular instruments now come equipped with FPGAs, including several released in the past year that offer the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA.

These instruments allow test engineers to implement more complex digital signal processing at faster rates than ever before.