National Instruments has released two new CompactRIO systems that give engineers and machine builders a solution for rapidly deploying industrial machines at high volume. These new systems have an integrated hardware architecture that combines an embedded real-time processor and a reconfigurable field programmable gate array (FPGA) within a single chassis, lowering the cost of CompactRIO for OEM applications. Engineers can design, prototype and deploy the customizable, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware systems for embedded machine control and data acquisition systems using the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical development environment, reducing the cost of designing custom embedded hardware for high-volume deployment.
The new cRIO-9072 and cRIO-9074 systems extend the family of NI FPGA-based deployment platforms, including PXI, PC and standard CompactRIO hardware that share a standard embedded hardware architecture combining a powerful floating-point processor, a reconfigurable FPGA and input/output (I/O) modules. Because engineers can reuse the same LabVIEW code during prototyping and deployment, they are able to shorten time to market and increase machine reliability.
One example of the efficiency engineers can gain with these systems is Sanarus Medical Inc., which used CompactRIO to create the Visica2 Treatment System that fights breast cancer by providing office-based cryoablation treatment for biopsy-proven breast fibroadenomas. The Visica2 system uses cryoablation to destroy targeted fibroadenomas through a 3 mm incision, under ultrasound guidance, without requiring sutures or general anesthesia to offer women a minimally invasive alternative to the standard surgical treatment for such tumors.
It would be easy to miss the significance of this announcement. It's not just a couple of new products, but it is really an acknowledgment of something I've suspected for a long time--NI is an automation company. The usual NI spin on its sales and marketing efforts follows The Long Tail popularized by Chris Anderson. In short, this concept involves selling small quantities of lots of things to make a substantial profit. If you plot sales on the y axis and product skus on the x, then the curve approximates a power curve with few products selling huge amounts (the "short head" or blockbusters), but a long tail of lots of products selling just a few each, but taken in total the area under the curve (total sales) would also be huge. This NI has done for many years. But these products address the "short head" of the power curve--that is, selling larger quantities of fewer products. NI is not abandoning its long tail approach, but rather looking to capitalize on the entire power curve. Very interesting.
10:36:38 AM 
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