Autotestcon Panelists Highlight Modular Instrumentation

An Autotestcon 2012 panel session titled “The Future of ATE with Modular Instrumentation” was chaired by Bob Helsel, executive director of the VXI Bus Consortium, and included Matthew Friedman, senior product manager for automated test at National Instruments; Tom Sarfi, president of the VXI Bus Consortium and VP of marketing and business development at VTI Instruments; and Larry Desjardin, president Modular Methods and former chairman of the board for the AXIe Consortium.

After a brief introduction by Helsel, Desjardin kicked off the Tuesday September 11 afternoon session with opening remarks that largely paralleled views he had presented in the EE May 2012 article, “Modular Market Drives a Disruptive Change.” Desjardin explained the present state of the modular market as an example of a Nash Equilibrium—as defined in the article, “a competitive equilibrium in a multiplayer game where each player keeps to a stable strategy because it is the optimal strategy given the strategies of the other players.”

According to Desjardin, the rapid and continuing growth of modular solutions and especially those based on PXI and PXIe, is creating a new equilibrium—clearly, one in which traditional box instruments play less of a roll. Porter’s five forces—substitute products, competitors, new entrants, suppliers, and customers—provide a framework in which the dynamics underlying the change within the test and measurement industry can be explained.

Much of the ensuing discussion followed along predictable “party lines,” each speaker highlighting the benefits of the technology his company pursued. However, there were a number of interesting exchanges, many of which directly related to the MIL/Aero marketplace represented at the conference.

PXIe speed together with new features is driving a lot of the change. PCIe 3.0 achieves 8-GT/s data rates, many times faster than IEEE-488, USB, or parallel PXI. And, Friedman listed some of the advantages stemming from the low-level firmware access users have been given in NI’s new PXIe-5644R vector signal transceiver, a good example of a modern FPGA-based instrument.

AXIe was perhaps the most contentious topic. Sarfi argued that VXI was solving the industry’s problems very well, so few advantages seemed to come with AXIe. Friedman addressed PCB size concerns and commented that 6U PXI was a viable standard although most new development activity was in the 3U format. Desjardin, filling in for Von Campbell (chairman of the board of the AXIe Consortium and platform components R&D manager for Agilent Technologies' software and modular solutions division), who could not attend, explained that the marketing plans implemented by AXIe vendors had taken into account the lack of an extensive infrastructure. The first instruments released were digitizers and high-end analyzers that could take advantage of the larger size and higher power capabilities of the format and that also did not require support from complementary modules.

A few questions from the audience were fielded and the session wrapped up after about one and a half hours of discussion. No clear winner emerges from most panel sessions, and this one was no exception. However, Desjardin emphasized the importance of understanding the implications of the change he saw taking place—implications for a business’s own products as well as for the supporting supply chain.

Separate from the panel session, the modular topic surfaced several times throughout the three days of the conference. VXI still handles a great deal of the measurement job in the latest generation eCASS ATE. The main reason for this, and another large recurring theme of all Autotestcon conferences, is legacy support. On the other hand, few if any new VXI instruments are being developed. Of course, there are exceptions, but even in those cases, the basic development often addresses several formats. For example, a ZTEC digitizer may be offered in PXIe as well as VXI.

For Autotestcon participants, VXI can handle most requirements, but as a general-purpose modular format outside of the MIL/Aero industry, VXI continues its overall decline. In a conversation with this writer, one long-time industry expert compared the faster rate of new technology adoption by foreign military forces without significant legacy support issues to the slower rate at which new technologies are adopted by the U.S. military. And, with continuing budget constraints and multi-year extensions of existing programs, this situation seems unlikely to change soon.

View previous online exclusives, “Software Boosts Vector Signal Transceiver,” “LabVIEW 2012 shares stage with vector signal transceiver,” “'We don't judge, we measure',” and “New Breed of Semiconductors Demands New Breed of Semi Characterization and Test Solutions.”