LXI instruments Enable Test Engineers
to Take Advantage of
Game-Changing Technologies

By Christopher Ziomek, General Manager
Design Test Solutions, LitePoint

The widespread use of mobile devices is quickly transforming the way we communicate. Wirelessly accessing information, entertainment and the Internet is becoming increasingly more important. Not only is the method by which we communicate changing at an accelerated pace, the preferred choice of communication device is changing at an even faster pace.

In fact, the technological advancements in the past decade have had an astounding impact on the way we communicate, both personally and in the workplace. The once monstrous computers that occupied an entire room have now been reduced to compact, lightweight, portable systems with an unprecedented amount of processing power.

It is hard to believe that the now commonplace laptop was once overpriced and out-of-reach for most households when it was first introduced only a few decades ago. As technology continued to develop, the popularity and viability of laptop computers greatly increased. Lowered costs, combined with improved battery life, displays, processors, and network connectivity have all served to increase the availability and popularity of laptop computers. 

In the near future, the portability and increasing screen size of tablets is pushing them to the forefront as the technology of choice at both home and in the workplace, with forecasts predicting tablet sales to overcome that of laptops as early as 2014.

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The IVI Driver Standards

By Joe Mueller
President, IVI Foundation

The IVI Foundation exists to define standards that simplify programming test instruments.  Although the IVI Foundation is responsible for a large breadth of standards, some of the most important for constructing systems are the IVI driver standards.  The driver standards describe the software package that should accompany an instrument to provide a programmatic interface to the instruments.

The driver standards fall into three main pieces.  These pieces are:

• The IVI Architecture standards.  These are numbered 3.x.  The architecture standards describe things that are common to all drivers independent of the specific instrument that the driver supports. 
• The IVI Class standards.  The class standards describe capabilities of a certain class of products.  Thus, a driver that complies with the class standards implements a known set of functions for a particular class of instrument.  For instance, a common set of functions for all multimeters.
• The IVI common components.  Although the common components are delivered to customers directly by the IVI foundation, they are also defined by the IVI driver standards.  The common components provide common software components that are necessary for the drivers, but are not specific to anyone driver.  By providing them directly from the foundation, they ensure that the drivers themselves can work together without any conflicting vendor-specific pieces.

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Thanks to all our readers.
Bob Helsel, Editor
www.lxistandard.org

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