The PXIe-1083 chassis has a built-in Intel Thunderbolt 3 interface accessible through two Thunderbolt 3 ports on the front of the chassis. This enables control of the PXIe-1083 from a host PC that includes a Thunderbolt 3 port and is running a native (nonvirtualized) operating system that supports Thunderbolt connectivity.

Note The PXIe-1083 chassis does not include a slot 1; the Thunderbolt 3 ports replace this slot.

Thunderbolt technology is transparent to device drivers, so no additional software is needed for CompactPCI Express-level support for PXI Express devices in connected chassis.

Note For full PXI/PXI Express functionality such as chassis and controller identification, trigger routing, and slot detection, install the latest version of PXI Platform Services. This software is included with your kit; you also can find it at ni.com/downloads by searching for PXI Platform Services.

The link between the PC and the chassis is a Thunderbolt 3 link. This link is a dual-simplex communication channel comprised of differentially driven signal pairs. The link can transmit at a rate of up to 40 Gbps in each direction simultaneously. The Thunderbolt 3 interface connects to the PXI Express backplane through a Gen-2 x4 link to a PCI Express switch that fans out PCI Express links to the peripheral slots. This provides a nominal single direction data rate of 2 GB/s to the backplane.