Advertisement
5.
Longevity
Figure 3 provides a compari-
son of various interfaces over
the past 30-plus years. Most
noteworthy is the continuous
improvement in LAN perfor-
mance while maintaining
backward compatibility, sug-
gesting that it will continue
as a dominant force in the
computer industry for a long
time to come.
Extensions designed into the
LXI Standard ensure that it
will meet the foreseeable needs
of the test and measurement
industry, a critical requirement
of the automotive electron-
ics industry that supports an
active aftermarket and long
product lifetimes.
GPIB
72
1970
69
ARPAnet
3 Mb/s
Figure 3. LAN has evolved – and maintained backward compatibility – while other interfaces have come and gone.
6.
Flexibility
Cardcage-based solutions limit
the optimal instrumentation
placement in a test rack. For
example, system creators will
find it useful to put switching
in one low-cost subsystem and
stimulus/measurement instru-
ments in another, simplifying
service and avoiding use of
high-cost, high-performance
backplanes to control slow
relays (often the case in PXI
or VXI cardcages).
LXI instrumentation enables
a better approach: A modular
switch/measure unit equipped
with an internal digital multi-
meter (DMM) and a selection
of switching cards offers a
low-cost method of creating a
dedicated switching subsystem.
The use of LAN also makes it
possible to place the LXI-based
subsystem farther from the
host PC and closer to the unit
under test.
VXI
Windows
VME
TRS 80
IBM PC
ISA
77
81
82
84
1980
IEEE
Ethernet
10 Mb/s
802.3
Standard
PCI
®
Worldwide
Web
cPCI
MCA
EISA
89
91
1990
85
Ethernet
100 Mb/s
5
Few cardcage-based power
supplies meet the current
requirements of many automo-
tive electronic modules and
require external power supplies
based on different architectures.
Agilent has updated existing
designs to be LXI compliant,
housing them in compact, rack-
friendly enclosures. Examples
include the Agilent N5700
series of high-power supplies
and the Agilent N6700 series
of modular supplies (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Some LXI-compliant power supplies
have size, power and functionality advan-
tages over GPIB and PXI alternatives.
PXI
LXI
Rapid IO
PCI
PCI-X
Express
94
97
2000
95
Gbit
10 Gbit
Ethernet
Ethernet
04
Advertisement
