When he created National Instruments In 1976, James Truchard foresaw a bright future for the concept of virtual instrumentation ("The Software is the instrument"), commonly referred to at the time as "PC instrumentation". Ten years later, the release of LabVIEW, the easy-to-use graphical programming software workshop, gradually brought the concept to the masses.
However, James Truchard probably didn't think that virtual instrumentation could reach the high-end instrumentation market. At the time, PC-based instrumentation was hampered by PC backplane buses, and claimed to meet only relatively slow data acquisition needs. Gradually, however, it began to make inroads, thanks in particular to the release of board standards adapted to instrumentation, such as PXI. National InstrumentsThe company behind this standard has become a major player in RF (radio frequency) instrumentation. It intends to continue in this direction, as demonstrated by its recent acquisition of the American companies Phase Matrix (boards, modules and instruments) and AWR (design tools), both specialized in RF applications. National Instruments paid 58 M$ for Phase Matrix (which employs 50 people) and 58 M$ for AWR (which employs around 100 people).
In addition National Instruments has just opened a European systems engineering center in Budapest, to provide professional technical services (design consultancy, start-up assistance, demonstration and feasibility studies, software architecture and development consultancy) to the company's European customers, mainly in the field of RF measurement and test in the first phase of the project. This major project also includes a major R&D investment in the form of a professional laboratory equipped with all the RF equipment from the National Instruments product platform, worth 750,000 euros.
Learn more: www.ni.com/fr/