National Instruments on Tuesday announced the NI PXIe-8115 high-performance embedded controller featuring the latest dual-core 2nd Generation Intel Core i5 processor, which helps reduce test times and is ideal for multicore applications.

The NI PXIe-8115 controller features a rich set of peripheral I/O ports with six industry-leading USB 2.0 ports. These onboard peripheral ports minimize the need for external peripheral adapters and help engineers build cost-effective hybrid systems. To improve the serviceability and minimize downtime, the NI PXIe-8115 embedded controller features In-ROM and hard drive diagnostics to determine the controller’s health. By combining the controller with NI LabVIEW system design software, engineers can gain efficiency in a variety of test, measurement and control applications.

The Intel Core i5-2510E processor gives the NI PXIe-8115 controller a 2.5 GHz base clock frequency and uses Intel Turbo Boost Technology to automatically increase the clock frequency based on the application type. For example, when running applications that generate only a single processing thread, the CPU places the one unused core into an idle state and increases the active core’s clock frequency from 2.5 GHz to 3.1 GHz. This feature removes the need for software applications to be multithreaded to use the latest CPU developments. The flexibility to operate in a dual-core or a high-performance single-core mode makes the controller ideal for a variety of applications, including high-performance automated test and industrial control.

In addition to high CPU performance, the NI PXIe-8115 controller features six USB 2.0 ports, two display ports to connect to multiple monitors, dual-Gigabit Ethernet, GPIB, serial and parallel ports. This extensive peripheral I/O no longer requires the purchase of individual PXI modules. Engineers can optimize use of the slots in a PXI chassis because the slots are available for measurement modules rather than standard I/O. For memory-intensive applications, the controller comes standard with 2 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memory with up to 8 GB of maximum memory and support for the Windows 7 64-bit operating system. The NI PXIe-8115 controller combined with the NI PXIe-1082 chassis is ideal for intensive analysis, signal and image processing and high-speed data acquisition.

To improve the reliability of PXI systems, the NI PXIe-8115 controller features In-ROM and hard drive diagnostics for serviceability of the PXI embedded controller. With this new feature, engineers no longer have to use third-party tools to determine the health of the memory and hard drive. By combining the analysis of the diagnostics with spare hard drive and memory options from National Instruments, the improved serviceability of the NI PXIe-8115 reduces downtime and ensures minimal impact to the application.