Why Choose National Instruments for GPIB Instrument Control?

For more than thirty years National Instruments has set the standard of excellence in instrument control with GPIB. This paper focuses on the distinct advantages of using National Instruments GPIB hardware and software in an instrument control system. From our long-standing commitment to the longevity of GPIB, to key differentiators that set us apart from our competitors, to maximizing upon continuous improvements in hardware and software design, National Instruments has been and will continue to be the leader in GPIB communication.

1. Continuous Innovation
2. Three Key Differentiators
3. The Future of NI and GPIB for Instrument Control
4. Summary

Continuous Innovation

NI began developing GPIB products in 1976, driving the introduction of the ANSI/IEEE 488 standard. Since then, NI has actively advanced the GPIB standard and GPIB technologies by gathering feedback from users and instrument vendors for all components required to use the bus.

These collaborative efforts during the past 30 years helped GPIB become a proven, easy-to-use control interface.  Moving forward, we are continuing our strong commitment to GPIB and instrument control. During recent years we have redesigned many GPIB products to include new features, reduce physical size, and enhance capabilities.

Software and Instrument Driver Updates

The success of GPIB and its continued use beyond the next decade is largely related to ubiquitous software and instrument driver availability. NI LabVIEW is an industry standard software for developing instrument control applications.  A dedicated team of NI software engineers develops new instrument drivers for instruments released by hundreds of different vendors each year. Today, the NI Instrument Driver Network is the largest online directory of open-source instrument drivers available.

In addition, we continue to develop the GPIB device driver and frequently release OS support updates to ensure your success using GPIB with whichever OS and development language you choose.

Three Key Differentiators

When considering choices for instrument control hardware, many scientists and engineers often make the choice solely based on price, incorrectly assuming that GPIB interfaces are a commodity and that all controllers are equal.  When purchasing a GPIB controller for your instrument control system, please remember that in three key areas National Instruments GPIB Controllers offer benefits that can help save you time and money throughout the life of your system, from development through production and maintenance. These three areas are:

• Performance - With unparalleled hardware throughput and highly optimized driver software, you can run more tests in a shorter amount of time increasing your overall efficiency and helping you create more products and generate more revenue
• Reliability - Hardware and software reliability give you the peace of mind that your system will run error free over long periods of time without interruptions. This reliability results in less downtime, saving you both time and money
• Productivity - Configuration, troubleshooting and debugging tools, world class technical support, a de facto industry standard application programming interface (API) that has increased in performance and efficiency, yet unchanged in user experience for more than 20 years, and the widest OS support are among the many features that give you the most productive development environment, ensuring that you can create your applications with minimal time and effort, again saving you precious time and helping you introduce products faster

It is very important to note that it is not possible to completely divide these three areas. For example, in order for a driver to provide high reliability and robustness, it may incur additional internal overhead which could negatively affect performance. Having the best GPIB software and hardware combination involves a delicate balance of features that provides the optimum in performance, reliability, and productivity.

The Future of NI and GPIB for Instrument Control

Is GPIB still the future of instrument control?  Is LXI replacing GPIB? Does Hi-Speed USB offer better performance and faster setup time than LXI? What new instrument control interfaces are emerging? These are all critical questions for today’s engineers and scientists. 

Despite the use of GPIB in the industry as a de facto instrument control bus interface for the past 30 years, it is important to remember that no single bus or technology has been able to deliver the best performance, simplest ease of use, and lowest cost. GPIB demonstrates the best combination of these elements but is not the best in all categories. Thus, you should understand the specific instrument control needs of your application before choosing an instrument control bus.

NI constantly evaluates the characteristics of new instrument control bus technologies to provide recommendations to our users and ensure interoperability with existing GPIB interfaces. Three new promising instrument control bus technologies are USB, Ethernet, and Cabled PCI Express. USB-controlled devices are well-suited for applications with portable measurements, laptop or desktop data logging, and in-vehicle data acquisition; however, cable length is limited to 5 m and the connectors are not rugged. Ethernet is most useful for creating a network of highly distributed instruments that require remote access capabilities across large geographies. Be aware that Ethernet has the highest (worst) latency of all instrument control bus interfaces. This can cause significant bottlenecks in high-performance applications. Cabled PCI Express is an emerging technology that holds promise for a high-bandwidth, low-latency interface for instrument control and data sharing in high-performance applications. However, it requires some cost for the controller and cables, similar to GPIB today.

GPIB remains a dominant industry standard for general-purpose instrument control and will continue meeting most engineers’ measurement and automation needs for many years to come. National Instruments is committed to supporting GPIB products, and we will continue its investment beyond the next decade. You can rely on NI to provide you with the information and products you need as instrument control options continue to evolve. Our efforts are continuing to focus on improving your instrument control experience while maintaining backward compatibility to protect the development investments you make today.

Summary

In summary, NI GPIB products deliver high reliability through stable hardware and software and more than 30 years as a leading GPIB vendor.  NI GPIB hardware and software products deliver improved performance, high reliability, and increased productivity through state-of-the-art hardware and highly optimized software that maximize throughput. NI has a long-standing commitment to the longevity of GPIB and the ultimate success of your instrument control applications. 

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