CompactRIO Targets Higher-Volume Applications

National Instruments (NI)said this week that it has rolled out two new versions of its well-knownprogrammable real-time CompactRIO controller that will target lower-cost,higher-volume applications.

The newcRIO-9075 and cRIO-9076 integrated chassis and controllers will enableCompactRIO to move into applications that focus on products, as well as thetest applications that have become a staple of the technology. The newcontrollers, however, are still expected to serve in a variety of industries,including medical, robotics, energy and more.

"These areintended for 50-a-year or 100-a-year or 1,000-a-year types of applications,"noted Matt Spexarth, embedded platform products manager for NI. "We're lookingto get into products-use applications and lab-use applications."

The newcontrollers, introduced at the EmbeddedSystems Conference here this week, will be more integrated than theirpredecessors. Instead of the three printed circuit (PC) boards that have becometypical for CompactRIO, the new units will employ a single PC board with a400-MHz Freescale real-time processor and an embedded, reconfigurable XilinxSpartan-6 field programmable gate array. They will still be programmable withthe LabView graphical system design tools.

TheCopmactRIO products are often employed by so-called "domain experts" who areexperts in their fields but may have little or no experience in embeddedprogramming.

The key tothe introduction is the lower cost. NI said that the two new controllers willhelp design teams get to market faster and deploy at higher volumes more costeffectively. The 9075 and 9076 will be priced at $1,299 and $1,999,respectively. Prices of the predecessor systems were approximately 30 to 50percent higher.

"We've received a lot of feedback saying thatif we could lower the cost, we could get more design wins in higher-volumecases," Spexarth said. "That's why we're doing this."