PXI Technology and Application Forum was held in Beijing

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PXI Technology and Application Forum was held in Beijing [Copy link]

Driven by the Made in China 2025 program, smart institutes are promoting the upgrading of the national defense and aerospace industries, and military-civilian integration is reshaping the national defense and aerospace industry chains; ADAS and Internet of Vehicles make cars more intelligent; China's semiconductor industry is moving forward under the general trend; 5G, Internet of Things, big data, and machine learning are leading the technological revolution.

On June 27, 2018, the NI PXI[/url] Technology and Application Forum (PXITAC) was held in Beijing. At PXITAC, NI helped engineers explore the future together. Since its establishment in 2004, PXI TAC has witnessed every major breakthrough in the 20 years since the birth of PXI technology. It is the largest and most influential PXI technology professional forum in China. As the founder and industry leader of PXI technology, NI continues to help engineers and scientists cope with various challenges. This year's PXI TAC covers key areas including defense and aerospace, automobile and rail transportation, semiconductor testing, and scientific research prototypes. These four are the areas that PXI technology wants to promote and develop, and they are also the directions that NI China's localization strategy wants to emphasize. Today, 5G technology is developing rapidly. Some of its key technologies can be used in military and aerospace. For technology integration, we can draw inferences from one example, so that the barriers between fields and fields no longer exist. Therefore, at this PXITAC, the visiting guests deeply discussed the latest technology and industry development trends. With the essence of the PXI platform accumulated over the past 20 years, it demonstrated products and application solutions that are more in-depth to users.

Classic case sharing, showing the progress of test and measurement technology

At the forum, the guests shared three typical cases with us. In the first case, it was shown that under the drive of "intelligent equipment" and "informatization construction", the effective use of testing means and guarantee methods is one of the effective ways to improve the cost-effectiveness of military equipment. Moreover, modern military equipment is more complex and more integrated than ever before, which leads to the increasing complexity of testing. Information fusion and cross-border technology will be the new normal.

At the forum, representatives of Aviation Industry Beijing Enterprises Research Institute introduced their understanding of the C919 large passenger aircraft, ARJ21 regional aircraft and AG600. The "iron bird experiment" conducted by NI is a large and complex measurement and control system with a long project cycle and multiple project iterations. It just needs the flexible architecture of PXI to support the expansion of multiple models. During the entire test process, it is realized through NI's SystemLink software. SystemLink provides a centralized interface for automation tasks such as software deployment, remote device configuration, and system health performance monitoring, which helps to improve operational efficiency and reduce maintenance costs. In fact, we are all committed to the interconnection and interoperability of data, as well as the construction of the Internet and informatization. On many cloud services, how to effectively connect to artificial intelligence services and how to feed actual data back to the cloud? This requires some tools to manage, and SystemLink is the software that manages the test system. In the future, we may see that the test system can also be connected into a network, whether it is a local area network or a public network. Based on this, the realization of industrial upgrading and the true meaning of Industry 4.0 and Made in China 2025 will be just around the corner.

Professor Li Liang from the Department of Automotive Engineering at Tsinghua University demonstrated the hardware-in-the-loop simulation system that they have been iterating and upgrading on this platform since 2015, and it has now developed to the fourth generation. This shows that technology needs to be inherited on the one hand, and it also needs to be upgraded and replaced based on a certain foundation. This example shows that PXI technology and platform have taken a big step forward in solving the difficulty of "how to enable our scientific research team to produce the greatest output with the best energy, so that they can focus on new ideas in the field of scientific research and innovation, thereby reducing their difficulty in using technology."

For the last in-vehicle infotainment system case, Chen Shanglou, director of Beijing Jingwei Hirain Technology Co., Ltd., explained in detail to the audience how to apply chips to mass-produced vehicles and how to overcome the technical bottlenecks and gaps. Engineers can actually share data from the experimental end to the test end. Sharing can speed up engineers' testing and verification in semiconductors and even accelerate mass production.

Today, the rapid changes in technology in the automotive field are changing car companies and cars themselves. Vehicle connectivity technology helps reduce traffic congestion and traffic accidents. Unlike sensors in autonomous driving technology, V2X has a wider range of applications and is not affected by weather conditions. As the two main technical routes for smart cars and smart transportation, the V2X-based vehicle networking market is about to emerge. At this forum, NI demonstrated their powerful and complete platform, whether it is DSRC or LTE-V2X, it has corresponding solutions. The platform can provide continuous flexibility to cope with the rapid evolution of current and future V2X technology.

PXI will promote technological innovation

At the subsequent media meeting, Luke Schreier, vice president of NI automated test market, introduced how PXI supports technological innovation. The first is the construction of modules, which can insert new technologies according to different needs. Luke said: "For PXI technology, we can meet different needs through different modular options and extend our insights into different technologies; in addition, thanks to the modular characteristics of PXI, we can easily include such new needs in the PXI system. "The second point he talked about was the software aspect. As a hardware platform, PXI actually needs to be combined with software for application. It can be seen that software plays a very important role in it. For example, artificial intelligence requires many algorithms to be implemented on the carrier. Based on PXI and software definition, engineers can focus more on algorithm research. Whether it is used in automobiles or in other fields, the underlying calculations can be handed over to the PXI system. Based on such a platform and software, the algorithm can be customized and developed to form commercial hardware research and development. Finally, Luke emphasized that although PXI is a widely used test platform, it does not mean that it is a dedicated semiconductor or automotive test platform, nor is it a dedicated military and aerospace test platform. He said: "We can learn from each other in different fields, and even learn from each other the test methods and test technologies in other fields. Through the adjustment of the PXI platform, methods from other fields can be combined with new fields. "

The close connection between industries cannot be ignored

Liu Xuyang, Marketing Manager of NI Greater China, took the two major fields of automotive testing and aviation testing as examples, and added: "In the automotive field, we often pay attention to the launch time of new cars, test requirements and test nodes, and the test nodes of automobiles and aviation are very similar, but the automotive field is very market-oriented, so a lot of method improvements, upper-level design and planning have been done, and these methods, whether system methods or test methods, can actually be used as reference in the aviation field. Today, we see that the commercial aircraft field is also borrowing and referring to the test methods in the automotive field to construct test tasks, because COMAC will also have some launch test flight nodes, which is very similar to our example of automotive marketization."

Tang Min, marketing director of NI Asia Pacific, added from the perspective of the local market. She said that what people are concerned about nowadays is product upgrades, and intellectual property (IP) and algorithms are the core parts of industrial upgrading. Based on the custom features, modular features and openness of the PXI platform, engineers can spend more time focusing on algorithm and IP development when doing upgrade development and product development. More importantly, it can be reused and inherited. In addition, she emphasized that PXI has a very broad ecosystem. "If PXI TAC is likened to a big tree, NI provides the trunk, and our customers and partners are the branches and leaves above. Today we see local manufacturers and local partners who are rooted in this big tree and can help different industries including 5G, smart cars, communications, etc. They are the key to the success of our algorithms and IP continuous rapid iteration. Therefore, I believe that the development and iteration of algorithms and the PXI ecosystem are crucial to China's industrial upgrading. "She said.

PXI, as an ecosystem, plays a big role in business cooperation. Qiao Wei, NI's sales director for Greater China, said: "As an open ecosystem, PXI can be open in terms of technology, allowing different manufacturers to come in and make modules. Through various types of cooperation, the entire PXI product supply chain can meet the needs of future technology integration. Through cooperation with customers, we can even predict future technologies. In addition, we not only provide solutions or software development on the PXI platform. We must rely on the openness of PXI to extend from past business development to technical solutions and then to our products. These are all local teams working hard to achieve this trend. In addition, we must reflect the needs of the Chinese market in our products, so as to better serve the local market through the creation of a local market ecosystem and ultimately serve the local market with a diversified cooperation model."

PXI welcomes the arrival of the 5G era

Traditional 5G providers also face many difficulties in dealing with intelligent connected cars, 5G communications, and IoT smart terminals. Traditional test instrument manufacturers provide more standardized test instruments. They are very familiar with test technologies and means, and hope to provide test solutions based on methods and technologies. Of course, such methods were more applicable in the past. But with the advent of the new trend of 5G, the biggest problem we face is the constant demand for change. Facing this point, Luke said: "5G has a very fast process from the beginning to the development. If it is measured based on traditional methods, its changes will be limited. It is difficult for us to use the most suitable test method to meet new test requirements, because we always wait for new equipment to come to the market to have the best test method, but for PXI, we emphasize customization. We give the initiative of testing to users, and users define the test content according to their needs. It is faster and can better meet test requirements. " Generally, some aspects require high test performance during testing, but some aspects do not necessarily require such high test performance. Users understand such optimization and selection requirements better than test manufacturers. NI returns the test to the user, allowing the user to design it themselves to meet the difficulties and changes in new trends. For engineers, this is a major "happy event."

As the founder and industry leader of PXI technology, NI continues to help engineers and scientists cope with various testing difficulties. In the future, the needs of each industry will change in real time. With the powerful ecosystem of PXI, they are confident to meet the following challenges.