NIWeek: “We don't judge, we measure”

Austin, TX. NIWeek 2012 has ushered in a revised use of the Austin Convention Center facilities to better cope with more than 3,400 attendees—up 12% on last year. As usual, the Tuesday morning keynote was kicked off by Dr. James Truchard–“Dr. T”.

This year's emphasis is on system design—specifically, “Graphical Systems Design.” Following transistors and integrated circuits, Dr. T. said that we had entered the software stage of ecosystem evolution. The goal, in his words, is to do for embedded design what the PC did for the desktop. This idea is embodied in a “V” diagram that places system design activities on the left arm of the V with corresponding test activities on the right.

Various types of software-driven test activities, according to Dr. T., can be grouped under a cyber-physical test heading. These include hardware in the loop (HIL) testing and protocol-aware test. Abstraction is the key to these and other system level test strategies. For NI, synchronous dataflow has been a key concept, supporting timing within LabVIEW routines, leading to flexible FPGA designs.

LabVIEW is the central layer of NI's platform-based approach, Dr. T. explained, with applications being funneled through appropriate LabVIEW routines to the actual hardware upon which they are deployed. This architecture also applies to the company's work with the reconfigurable I/O (RIO) hardware platform, still evolving after 15 years.

To sum up his message, Dr. T. recounted the company's even-handed 1989 offer to both cold-fusion proponents and opponents: each would receive a free copy of LabVIEW with which the various theories could be proven or disproven. Few took up the offer, although it was a good example of one of Dr. T.'s closing remarks, “We don't judge. We measure.”

Eric Starkloff, VP of Product Marketing, followed Dr. T. and introduced the demos that made up the remainder of the session. Throughout, the theme was very much one of high-level, abstracted, system design. Virtually all products with electronic content have become far too complex to test in traditional ways. It's key to be able to leverage design IP in the test activities. For example, a luxury car may have more than 100M lines of code running on a large number of processors and controllers.

National Instruments is choosing its NIWeek venue to introduce new hardware and software products, on which we will be reporting as the week goes on.

Read our continuing coverage of NIWeek here.

See previous Online Exclusive: “New Breed of Semiconductors Demands New Breed of Semi Characterization and Test Solutions.”