National Instruments Releases 2011 Automated Test Outlook

Report Details Next-Generation Test and Measurement Trends That Will Impact the Electronics Industry. The 2011 Automated Test Outlook shares findings of National Instruments research into the technologies and methodologies shaping test and measurement. The report details trends that apply across numerous industries including consumer electronics, automotive, semiconductor, aerospace and defence, medical devices and communications.

The 2011 Automated Test Outlook is based on input from academic and industry research, user forums and surveys, business intelligence and customer advisory board reviews. With this data as its foundation, the report delivers a broad representation of the next generation of trends for meeting the business and technical challenges in test and measurement. The report is organised into five categories: Business Strategy, Architectures, Computing, Software and I/O. The major trends discussed in the 2011 report include the following: -- Organisational Test Integration: Integrating validation and production test requires a focus on changes to strategy, processes, people and technology. -- System Software Stack: A highly integrated software framework provides a flexible system architecture for adding measurement capability and reducing test time. -- Heterogeneous Computing: Future test systems will require different types of processing nodes to address increasingly demanding analysis and processing needs. -- IP to the Pin: Sharing field-programmable gate array (FPGA) intellectual property (IP) between design and test dramatically shortens design verification/validation and improves production test time and fault coverage. To view or download the 2011 Automated Test Outlook, visit www.ni.com/ato