NI Introduces Industry’s Highest Performance PXI Express Synchronisation Module and Industry’s Fastest PXI Express Remote Controller

“NI worked with the PXI Systems Alliance to introduce PXI in 1997 and continues to be a leader in pushing the platform’s performance with the introduction of these new PXI Express products,” said Eric Starkloff, NI Vice President of Product Marketing. “The new timing module is the first in the market to provide access to the advanced PXI Express timing and synchronisation features for best-in-class clock and trigger routing for synchronising PXI. The new remote controller interfaces PXI Express systems using the fastest cabled PCI Express link to double the throughput for high-speed data streaming applications.”

The NI PXIe-6674T timing module unlocks the most advanced timing and synchronisation capabilities for PXI Express systems. It generates and routes clocks and triggers between devices in a PXI Express chassis. It can also externally route signals to other PXI and PXI Express chassis or third-party instrumentation. The timing module can generate two types of clock signals. The first is a highly stable 10 MHz clock based on an onboard precision OCXO reference with a 50 ppb accuracy. The second is a clock up to 1 GHz with µHz resolution from the direct digital synthesis (DDS) clock generation circuit. It also features advanced trigger and timing routing with PXIe_DSTAR differential star trigger lines that offer less than 500 ps skews and 10 ns of delays.

The NI PXIe-PCIe8388 kit uses a x16 Gen 2 PCI Express link that provides up to 8 GB/s/direction of sustained throughput. Engineers can use the NI PXIe-PCIe8388 remote controller to control PXI Express systems from a x16 Gen 2 PCI Express slot in an NI rack-mount controller. For example, the remote controller works with the new NI RMC-8354 (which features an Intel® Core i7™ processor) through a fully transparent, high-bandwidth cabled PCI Express link. With this level of data throughput performance, the remote controller is eight times faster than the company’s existing remote controllers. The remote controller also features a downstream port to create high-performance, multichassis systems by connecting to other PXI Express chassis as well as to other enclosures with general-purpose graphical processing units (GP-GPUs) for added computational ability.

Both new products work with NI software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, as well as NI hardware, such as modular instruments.