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National Instruments Focuses on Addressing Global Challenges With Innovation at NIWeek 2009AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 6, 2009, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- NIWeek -- Executives from National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) discussed how NI products are helping address global challenges during the 15th annual NIWeek graphical system design conference and exhibition. Speaking to more than 3,000 engineers and scientists, the largest number of NIWeek attendees to date, NI executives and engineers demonstrated new products and technologies that help improve efficiency, productivity and performance. The presentations showcased how customers use NI technology to innovate, saving time and money to more effectively address today's global economic challenges. Dr. James Truchard, NI president, CEO and cofounder, opened NIWeek 2009 by discussing how NI remains committed to delivering real-world solutions to real-world problems through the continuous development of new products and technologies. He highlighted how NI LabVIEW graphical system design software has helped engineers and scientists meet, exceed and exploit the complex engineering challenges associated with parallel architectures and multicore programming. Truchard also discussed how NI products such as LabVIEW and new field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based hardware have helped companies thrive in the face of economic challenges through efficient innovation. "We are meeting the challenges, we are innovating and we are making a difference with our technologies," Truchard said. "LabVIEW, PXI, CompactRIO and other NI products have proven to be very good tools for multicore and FPGA programming, and we will continue to help our customers create future innovations in these areas and others to address a variety of issues." Following Truchard, NI vice president of marketing John Graff hosted NI engineers on stage to demonstrate new NI products including LabVIEW 2009, X Series multifunction data acquisition devices, NI VeriStand real-time testing software and the NI wireless sensor network. A series of demonstrations showed how these products meet sophisticated demands for a variety of industrial, test and embedded applications. Graff also highlighted a few customers who are using NI products to lower costs and speed development. Analog Devices Inc. (ADI), for example, reduced its cost of test by a factor of 10 by building its microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microphone test system on LabVIEW and PXI instrumentation. Additionally, Animage, a veterinary medical imaging device manufacturer, prototyped and deployed an innovative scanning machine in nine months using only four team members working with LabVIEW and NI CompactRIO. NI Business and Technology Fellow Mike Santori, along with several NI engineers, opened the second day of NIWeek 2009 by unveiling several new innovative technologies. Presentations included newly available products such as the NI Real-Time Hypervisor software for parallel and multicore processing, the IP Node for LabVIEW FPGA and a prototype of a new NI FlexRIO adapter module for Camera Link image processing. Additionally, Santori's keynote featured demonstrations of several other projects including a collaboration with Tektronix on a high-speed digitizer that exceeds 10 GS/s and programmable NI wireless sensor network nodes. The team also previewed new Web-based software, built on LabVIEW, for system design and user interfaces. Jeff Kodosky, NI business and technology fellow, cofounder and "father of LabVIEW," closed the second day keynote by stating that future technological innovation is necessary for addressing today's pressing issues and that replacing outdated technologies is critical for ensuring humanity's well-being in the future. He then explained how NI graphical dataflow programming can serve as an effective alternative to text-based programming for advanced applications and greatly enhance productivity. "National Instruments tools make it easier and faster to create simulations, to design and build intelligent control systems and to test those systems," Kodosky said. "The increased productivity of our tools is vital as the technology treadmill continues to accelerate." On the last day of the conference, Ray Almgren, vice president of academic relations, emphasized that today's students are tomorrow's innovators, and that it is crucial for professionals to work with students of all ages to inspire their interest in science, technology, engineering and math. Almgren examined how students today are tackling the Engineering Grand Challenges, as outlined by the National Academy of Engineering, with innovative projects using LabVIEW graphical system design including robotics innovation, medical device design and green engineering projects. He also highlighted several collaborations on university-level projects including the development of small, agile robots for rescue purposes, green engineering applications such as research into alternative fuel sources and biomedical projects to benefit third-world communities. Dr. David Barrett, director of SCOPE (Senior Capstone Program in Engineering) at Olin College, closed NIWeek 2009 by illustrating how robotics could be the world's next major disruptive technology. He explained that the proliferation of robotics is happening now and that robots are currently saving lives, from assisting in surgical procedures to replacing humans in dangerous working conditions. In his closing statements, Barrett reiterated that "Robots rock!" and that the future is now. Readers can learn more about the products and initiatives featured in the NIWeek 2009 keynote presentations by visiting www.ni.com. About National Instruments National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 30,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 15 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past 10 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, e-mailing [email protected] or visiting www.ni.com/nati. CompactRIO, LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, ni.com, NI FlexRIO, NI VeriStand and NIWeek are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. Editor Contact: Hilary Marchbanks, (512) 683-5937 SOURCE National Instruments http://www.ni.com |