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| National Instruments (NI) develops software and modular hardware products designed for integration in customer-defined virtual instrumentation solutions. NI products are used in a diverse array of measurement and automation systems for applications ranging from R&D to manufacturing to industrial control. |
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| To stay at the forefront of virtual instrumentation - an industry that NI pioneered - developers must deliver test and measurement (T&M) and industrial automation solutions that enable customers to capitalize on the latest low-cost, high-performance PC computing technologies. Thus, NI took early aim at developing plug-in instrumentation products for servers, workstations and desktops based on the PCI Express bus, a powerful new serial I/O interconnect technology. |
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| As a leading supplier of GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) cards for the T&M industry, NI developers wanted to have a solid PCI Express-based GPIB controller board available when PCI Express-enabled platforms began shipping in late summer of 2004. NI developers also wanted to come to market with a PCI Express solution for Camera Link, an industry-standard serial interface used to connect high-end video cameras to PCs for image acquisition in data-intensive research, medical and industrial computing applications. |
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| NI chose the Intel® 41210 Serial to Parallel PCI Bridge to quickly convert its existing PCI-based GPIB controller board design to PCI Express. Developers also used the Intel 41210 to bridge the PCI Express bus to a Camera Link design they built from scratch in PCI-X, leading to a high-bandwidth image-acquisition solution. |
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| Proven conformance with the emerging PCI Express standard and a long history of excellent engineering support made Intel the clear choice. In addition, the 41210 was the only PCI Express bridge product available at the time NI wanted to start development and has been extensively tested for interoperability with PCI Express chipsets and other Intel products. |
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| Intel's 41210 Serial to Parallel PCI Bridge cut six months to a year from NI's product development process, accelerating time-to-market while reducing development costs, and allowed NI to realize an eight-fold performance improvement with its PCI Express Camera Link product over the PCI version. The bridge also offered NI the benefit of a common component for both the GPIB board and image acquisition board, further lowering development overhead. |
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National Instruments*
