June 20, 2008 – National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) has announced its first high-performance dual gigabit Ethernet interface for PXI Express. The NI 8234 module offers two gigabit Ethernet ports with up to 1000 Mb/s transfer speeds per port for high-performance machine vision and dedicated LAN/LXI instrument control networks.
The new module features a x4 PCI Express interconnect, providing
up to 1 GB/s bandwidth for real-time data streaming from a
single PXI Express slot to give engineers and scientists more available slots for other PXI instrumentation, data acquisition and bus
interface modules.
Based on the Intel 82571EB gigabit Ethernet controller, the 1000 Mb/s Ethernet ports offer a substantial performance increase from 100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet. Compatible with the GigE Vision camera interface for machine vision applications, the NI 8234 delivers high-speed image transmission rates for standard cabling at distances up to 100 meters. With GigE Vision support, the NI 8234 is the first NI PXI Express module for machine vision applications. Engineers and scientists can add GigE modules to a PXI Express system to use more GigE Vision cameras with the NI 8234. As a result, they can now stream images from multiple GigE Vision cameras simultaneously to a PXI platform.

“GigE Vision provides engineers and scientists with an easy, scalable platform for high-resolution and high-speed imaging,” said Matthew Breit, Applications Engineer at Basler Vision Technologies. “When combined with PXI Express, the new dual gigabit Ethernet bus gives them the tools to unlock the bandwidth’s full potential.”
The NI 8234 is also ideal for LAN and LXI instrument control applications using dedicated private networks. Combined with the NI LabVIEW graphical system design platform, the module simplifies the use of LAN and LXI for distributed instrument control applications by connecting multiple Ethernet-based instruments with a single interface. In addition, National Instruments offers more than 400 instrument drivers for LAN and LXI instruments available for free download on the NI Instrument Driver Network to further simplify instrument control.
Compatible with Ethernet standards and cabling, the new dual gigabit Ethernet interface delivers gigabit Ethernet performance with CAT 5 Ethernet cables. It automatically detects cable polarity, eliminating the need for crossover and straight-through cable swapping.
Readers can learn more about machine vision at www.ni.com/vision and instrument control at www.ni.com/instrumentcontrol.