PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) modular instrumentation delivers a PC-based, standardized, high-performance measurement and automation system. PXI combines the high-speed PCI bus with integrated timing and triggering designed specifically for measurement and automation applications to deliver significant performance improvements over older architectures. For an overview of the PXI Specification, refer to PXI Specification Tutorial.

The following figure shows a typical PXI chassis installation.

Chassis Guidelines

FlexRIO devices can be installed in the following chassis and slots:

  • PXI chassis—PXI modules can be installed in any peripheral slot of a PXI chassis.
  • PXI Express chassis—PXI devices can be installed in the following PXI Express chassis slots:
    • PXI-1 slots—Accepts all PXI modules
    • PXI hybrid slots—Accepts all PXI modules that are hybrid slot-compatible or PXI Express modules
    • PXI Express slots—Accepts PXI Express modules

Using PXI-Compatible Products with Standard CompactPCI Products

The ability to use PXI-compatible products with standard CompactPCI products is an important feature provided by the PXI Specification, revision 2.1. If you use a PXI-compatible plug-in device in a standard CompactPCI chassis, you cannot use PXI-specific functions, but you can still use the basic plug-in device functions. For example, the PXI trigger bus on NI signal generators is available in a PXI chassis but not in a CompactPCI chassis. The CompactPCI specification permits vendors to develop sub-buses that co-exist with the basic PCI interface on the CompactPCI bus. Compatible operation is not guaranteed between CompactPCI devices with different sub-buses nor between CompactPCI devices with sub-buses and PXI. The standard implementation for CompactPCI does not include these sub-buses. NI signal generators work in any standard CompactPCI chassis. PXI-specific features, such as PXI_Trig bus and PXI_CLK10 reference are implemented on the J2 connector of the CompactPCI bus.