NI Extends Multicore to PXI and PXI Express Systems

The new NI 8352 and NI 8353 rack-mount controllers are based on the Intel dual-core Core 2 Duo and quad-core Core 2 Quad processors, respectively. These multicore processors are designed to simultaneously execute multiple computing tasks on separate CPU cores. Using the multithreaded nature of NI LabVIEW software, test engineers can scale applications based on the total available number of cores and can benefit from faster, more flexible applications.

These new controllers also work with a variety RAID storage configurations with multiple SATA II hard drives that support both RAID 0 (stripped) and RAID 1 (mirrored) configurations. RAID defines data storage schemes that divide and/or replicate data among multiple hard drives to provide increased reliability and/or increased file I/O performance. The new rack-mount controllers have up to four 250 GB hard drives with a maximum capacity of 1 TB and data read/write rates of up to 200 MB/s, a significant increase over the previous controllers. With these benefits, test engineers can record and playback data faster and for longer durations.

Also available is the NI 8353 RT controller, a version of the NI 8353 multicore-based controller that works with the LabVIEW Real-Time operating system. The NI 8353 RT takes advantage of the available quad cores on the Intel processor to increase performance and determinism for various real-time applications. With this enhancement, test engineers can build PXI- or PXI Express- based test, measurement and control applications with real-time response and high determinism. Because of the modularity of PXI and open development environment of LabVIEW, test engineers can also create a custom real-time embedded solution using the NI 8353 RT controller with any number and combination of PXI/PXI Express plug-in modules. This makes it possible to achieve deterministic, reliable and real-time performance for a multitude of applications.