National Instruments debuts controller for OEM market

Austin, TX—Original equipment manufacturers will benefit from a new pair of products for the embedded controller OEM market, introduced today, Nov. 27. In a departure from National Instruments’ past market focus, NI is targeting OEMs with new products based on the NI CompactRIO line of high-performance data acquisition and control systems. The NI cRIO-9072 and cRIO-9074 CompactRIO systems give engineers and machine builders a solution for rapidly deploying industrial machines at high volume.

By Control Engineering Staff November 27, 2007

Austin, TX —Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs, machine builders) and system integrators will benefit from a new pair of products for the embedded controller OEM market, introduced today, Nov. 27. In a major departure from

National Instruments’

past market focus, the company is targeting OEMs with new products based on the

NI CompactRIO

CompactRIO is a high-performance embedded control and acquisition platform powered by graphical system design for advanced applications where small size, low cost and reliability are crucial. CompactRIO is powered by National Instruments’ LabView FPGA (field programmable gate array) and LabView Real-Time technologies that give users the ability to design, develop and deploy custom embedded systems for a variety of industries such as automotive, military and aerospace, industrial and machine control, and embedded systems prototyping. The CompactRIO programmable automation controller (PAC) delivers unprecedented control acquisition capabilities in a compact, rugged package.

Like cRIO predecessors , the two new models incorporate a built-in microcontroller, power supplies, and a backplane to accept cRIO I/O modules allowing system integrators to easily customize their systems for their particular applications. One of the most notable cRIO features, an on-board FPGA programmable in LabView (the company’s graphical programming environment), gains center stage as the unit’s real-time control processor.

To reduce the cost of the new cRIO-907x systems for high-volume applications, NI engineers designed them as integrated systems, with the embedded real-time processor and FPGA chip on the same printed circuit board (PCB) rather than multiple PCBs as in traditional cRIO systems. The cRIO-9072 combines an industrial 266 MHz real-time processor and an eight-slot chassis with an embedded, reconfigurable 1M gate FPGA chip. The NI cRIO-9074 contains a 400 MHz real-time processor and an 8-slot chassis with an embedded, reconfigurable 3M gate FPGA chip.

In another departure from past practices , the company has set volume prices for the units. NI cRIO-9072 is priced from $1,299 in 100-unit quantities, and NI cRIO-9074 is priced from $1,999 in 100-unit quantities.

For more explanation about differences between fixed and programmable silicon, read this from Control Engineering : ASICs Versus FPGAs .

— C.G. Masi , senior editor Control Engineering News Desk( Register here and scroll down to select your choice of eNewsletters free .)