NEWS RELEASE NIWeek Aug. 4, 2011 During the
17th annual NIWeek graphical system design
conference and exhibition, engineers from National Instruments
(Nasdaq: NATI) discussed how NI products are accelerating
engineering innovation. The conference included NI customers who
demonstrated the dramatic productivity gains they achieved using
the NI approach to graphical system design, which provides a
reconfigurable hardware and software platform that accelerates the
development of any system that needs measurement and control.
National Instruments engineers also unveiled many new NI
technologies that help innovators greatly increase
productivity.
Dr. James Truchard, NI president, CEO and cofounder, opened
NIWeek 2011 by tracing the evolution of innovation and declaring
the establishment of the graphical system design era, in which
software plays a critical role in measurement and control systems.
He explained how tools such as NI LabVIEW
2011 system design software integrate tightly with
high-performance modular instrumentation to provide a unified
platform for meeting engineering challenges in every
industry.
Graphical system design gives engineers a platform-based approach
to innovation that dramatically increases productivity, Truchard
said. It provides an entire ecosystem that is completely open,
making it possible to connect thousands of different components,
including software and hardware, to more efficiently solve problems
for any engineering application.
Along with NI engineers, Eric Starkloff, NI vice president of test
and industrial embedded marketing, followed Truchard by
demonstrating how graphical system design and new NI technologies
make it possible for engineers to do more faster and at a lower
cost. The team unveiled new products that span across industries to
meet even the most demanding requirements. New products included
LabVIEW 2011; NI
VeriStand 2011 for real-time test; the companys first
multicore reconfigurable
I/O (RIO) system; the industrys highest-performing 14 GHz RF vector signal analyzer (VSA)
in a PXI form factor; and advanced PXI hardware for semiconductor test. The demonstrations
showed how these products and the graphical system design approach
can empower engineers to efficiently address the worlds greatest
engineering challenges.
Jeff Kodosky, NI business and technology fellow, cofounder and
father of LabVIEW, began the second day of NIWeek by discussing the
history and future potential of the graphical dataflow programming
language, known as G, which powers LabVIEW. When we started out 25
years ago, we sought to create a tool for scientists and engineers
that would be as productive for them as the spreadsheet was for
financial analysts, Kodosky said. During the next 25 years, LabVIEW
will define and deliver on the vision of graphical system design to
speed the design, prototyping and deployment of all kinds of
measurement and control systems.
Shelley Gretlein, director of software marketing at NI, along with
NI customers and engineers, demonstrated proof of Kodoskys vision
for the future of innovation with graphical system design.
Presentations illustrated how engineers and scientists are using
LabVIEW and other NI tools for unique solutions to major
engineering challenges in medical technology, urban infrastructure,
alternative energy and other advanced applications.
On the last day of NIWeek, Ray Almgren, NI vice president of
marketing for core platforms, provided additional examples of how
graphical system design is empowering innovation by inspiring
future engineers. He hosted high-school and university students
from around the world to demonstrate how integrating LabVIEW with
NI hardware made it possible for them to design and prototype a
variety of projects including medical devices, 3D displays and
industrial robotics. With minimal budgets and within weeks,
students used NI tools to create projects that would have demanded
far more time and money from professional engineers using
traditional tools.
The next generation of scientists and engineers is critical for
addressing the worlds challenges, Almgren said. Todays students
must have education that brings them beyond mathematics and
simulation, where they can do real engineering and innovate to
solve real-world problems, and NI graphical system design is making
that possible.
Readers can learn more about the technologies featured at NIWeek
2011 by visiting www.ni.com.
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