Embedded Controllers

National Instruments has announced what it claims is the fastest, highest-performance 3U embedded controllers available for PXI/CompactPCI - the NI 8171 series.

The series features Pentium III and Celeron processors and incorporates a set of standard and extended peripherals - such as hard drive, floppy drive, ethernet, and GPIB - into a single module for easier integration and less cabling among PXI modules.

In addition, the controllers offer the instrumentation features of an external SMB connection and internal circuitry to route timing and synchronisation signals to or from the internal PXI trigger bus.

The controllers can be used for a wide spectrum of applications - from high-performance automated systems to low-cost embedded systems. The rugged, industrial packaging makes them suitable for harsh environments.

These controllers make up the series: NI 8176 - highest-performance 3U embedded controller available with 1.26 GHz Pentium III processor with 512 KB of on-die advanced transfer cache; NI 8175 - high-performance 3U embedded controller with 866 MHz Pentium III processor; NI 8174 - low-cost 3U embedded controller with 566 MHz Celeron processor.