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RPC-Based Platform Accelerates Data Transfer from Test Instruments

Aug. 7, 2024
A new remote procedure call (RPC)-based solution dubbed TekHSI enables faster data transfer from test instruments to a user’s PC.

What you'll learn:

  • The importance of data management in test and mearsurement.
  • How Tektronix’s high-speed interface addresses data transfer.

 

Evaluation, validation, and/or certification of electronic systems has always been a challenge to the electronic design community.

Being able to perform electronic test and measurement of a component, circuit, or product demands that not only must the testing tools be faster and more precise than what they're testing, they must capture huge amounts of broad sample data. This creates issues in capture, management, and storage of such large chunks of information, further complicating the evaluation task involved.

Unblocking the Data-Transfer Bottleneck

Addressing a critical aspect of one of the bottlenecks of data management, Tektronix announced the availability of a remote procedure call (RPC)-based solution called TekHSI, which enables faster data transfer from testing instruments to a user’s PC. 

The TekHSI (Tektronix’s high-speed interface) works as an upgrade to the firmware on Tektronix MSO 4B, 5, and 6 Series models, as well as the B and LP instrument variations. The abstractions provided enable higher data-transfer speeds along with advanced implementation and scaling abilities. TekHSI can also capture optimum output from an instrument’s physical link and move the data more quickly.  

Legacy practices like meticulous code optimization for higher data-transfer rates, using standard commands for programmable instruments (SCPI) like curve and curvestream for data transfer, makes it difficult to maximize the bandwidth of the physical link, typically 1-Gb/s Ethernet.

TekHSI provides an alternative for higher data-transfer speeds—its abstractions make it easier to implement, use, and scale. The platform is available via a Python library for automation projects, as well as the TekScope PC version 2.10 for user-interface applications.

Gaurav Marmat, Tektronix Product Manager, said, “Before the launch of TekHSI, our customers had to depend on SCPI curve and curvestream commands for data transfer, and those methods resulted in workflow bottlenecks for test and measurement engineers working with large record length and sample rate waveform files.

"TekHSI is based on Google’s modern remote procedure call architecture, and is very intuitive to adopt and scale across test automation needs for faster, more efficient data-transfer results. It’s an alternative to those complex and slow data-transfer options.” 

Related links:

 

About the Author

Alix Paultre | Editor-at-Large, Electronic Design

An Army veteran, Alix Paultre was a signals intelligence soldier on the East/West German border in the early ‘80s, and eventually wound up helping launch and run a publication on consumer electronics for the US military stationed in Europe. Alix first began in this industry in 1998 at Electronic Products magazine, and since then has worked for a variety of publications in the embedded electronic engineering space. Alix currently lives in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Also check out his YouTube watch-collecting channel, Talking Timepieces

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