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National Instruments Corporation
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Introduction
This chapter provides overview information for PXI Express and the
NI PXIe-8100 embedded controller.
Benefits of PXI Express
The PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation) industry standard, an open
specification governed by the PXI Systems Alliance (PXISA), has quickly
gained adoption and grown in prevalence in test, measurement, and control
systems since its release in 1998. One of the key elements driving the rapid
adoption of PXI is its use of PCI in the communication backplane. As
the commercial PC industry has improved the available bus bandwidth
by evolving PCI to PCI Express, PXI is now able to meet even more
application needs by integrating PCI Express into the PXI standard. By
taking advantage of PCI Express technology in the backplane, PXI Express
increases the available PXI bandwidth from up to 132 MB/s to up to 8 GB/s
for a more than 60x improvement in bandwidth.
PXI Express maximizes both hardware and software compatibility with
PXI modules. PXI Express hybrid slots deliver both PCI and PCI Express
signaling to accept devices that use PXI communication and triggering or
the newer PXI Express standard. Software compatibility is maintained
because PCI Express uses the same OS and driver model as PCI, resulting
in complete software compatibility among PCI-based systems, for example
PXI, and PCI Express-based systems such as PXI Express.
PXI Express, like PXI, leverages from the CompactPCI specification to
define a rugged, modular form factor that offers superior mechanical
integrity and easy installation and removal of hardware components.
PXI Express products offer higher and more carefully defined levels of
environmental performance required by the shock, vibration, temperature,
and humidity extremes of industrial environments. Mandatory
environmental testing and active cooling is added to the CompactPCI
mechanical specification to ease system integration and ensure multivendor
interoperability.
