Experience Maximum Reliability with National Instruments for Instrument Control

National Instruments has been a leader in GPIB communication for more than 30 years. Our track record of producing high-quality and highly reliable hardware and software has allowed us to become the de facto standard for instrument control. When you choose National Instruments for your instrument control system, you’re building on three decades of continuous improvement and advancement. This paper describes the reliability you can expect when using National Instruments hardware and software for instrument control.

1. Hardware Reliability
2. Software Reliability
3. Vendor Reliability
4. Conclusion

Hardware Reliability

Using highly reliable hardware is crucial because it typically translates directly to cost savings. If the hardware is reliable and works without problems, you can avoid the cost of downtime as well as the cost of changing hardware and revalidating your systems. NI goes to great lengths to ensure that our GPIB hardware is extremely reliable. Some of the things that help ensure this are:

• Custom ASICs - NI uses the custom TNT ASICs, which incorporate almost 30 years of GPIB engineering know-how.
• Efficient Designs - By using custom ASICs NI is able to reduce the overall number of components in each design, therefore decreasing the chances for failure. For example, the mean time between failures (MTBF) for a certain product is usually calculated based on the MTBF for the individual components. The smaller the number of components on a product the better its MTBF will be.
• Environmental Specifications - Most NI GPIB hardware is rated to operate with the same accuracy and reliability at temperatures ranging from 0 to 55 *C (individual products may vary). Many third-party GPIB boards are rated from 0 to 40 *C and their functionality differs closer to the edges of that range.
• Industry Specifications - NI GPIB hardware adheres to the latest industry specifications including IEEE 488.1-2003 and the PCI specification v 2.1 for the NI PCI-GPIB.
• Manufacturing Effectiveness - It is important for your GPIB vendor to have a reliable manufacturing process that results in a high-quality product. NI has manufactured GPIB products for more than 30 years, optimizing the process to increase yields and ensure the highest-quality products. As a result, our GPIB products have extremely low return rates.
• Hardware Warranty - NI GPIB hardware comes with a 1-year warranty to ensure that in the rare cases where a product does malfunction, you are not liable for repair costs.

Software Reliability

Having reliable software ensures minimal downtime as well as a wider variety of systems on which to develop and deploy GPIB applications. NI-488.2 driver software is full-featured and has evolved over many man-years of development. For example, with NI-488.2 you can develop multithreaded applications as well as those written to run on multiprocessor or hyperthreaded systems. The driver has been thoroughly tested on those types of systems to ensure reliable, uninterrupted use.

Vendor Reliability

Finally, your GPIB vendor can play a major role in the overall reliability of your application. National Instruments has been manufacturing GPIB products for more than 30 years. We have great expertise in making these products and a long track record in supporting older interfaces and providing the same compatible API for 20+ years. NI is also ISO 9001:2000 certified, showing that our internal processes meet industry standards and further ensures the quality and reliability of our products.  NI also offers world-class service and support for all of its products through our experienced team of support engineers who work tirelessly to ensure the success of our customer's applications.

Conclusion

When you choose National Instruments for your instrument control hardware and software needs, you're building upon 30 solid years of continuous development and improvement.  You're also putting your trust in a vendor with a proven track record of quality and reliability, who stands behind their products with world-class support and unrivaled product warranties.   All these benefits have made NI the industry leader in instrument control, and the obvious choice for all of your hardware and software needs.

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