Measurement Matters

1: Multicore processors – “the free lunch is over” – or is it?
All engineering and quite a few non-engineering publications covered this and continue to cover it. It really was one of the hot topics of the year; it even cropped up the mainstream media like the BBC. The programming languages and techniques many of us grew up with don’t naturally represent parallel operations. They have had to be extended, some would say over-extended, to deal with concurrency, making the programmer’s task much more complex. Many pundits talk about the challenge of automatically mapping traditional sequential C code to multiple CPUs and hint at the need for a new approach to programming. Other commentators worry that this is going to slow down the rate of innovation. And then you talk to test engineers – those who have been using graphical programming tools for more than 10 years – and you realise these “new” high level approaches are already here and entering the mainstream of system development. I predict that this will continue to be a hot topic for 2008 because the number of cores is just going to keep growing.

2: Synthetic Instrumentation – the test industry’s take on “software-defined”
It’s difficult to decide whether this hot topic should be Synthetic Instruments or “Software-defined”. 2007 was definitely the year when more major test industry players “came out” and accepted that they were software-defined. Or at least that software was important. Away from the interactive manual use of benchtop instruments, the focus moved from test instruments to software-defined test systems.

3: Communications Buses for Automated Test – “...XI” everywhere
Was 2007 the year when everyone stopped talking about “LXI vs PXI” and started talking about PXI AND LXI (and GPIB... and USB ...and VXI ...whatever bus is needed)? Certainly everyone in the industry was talking about automated test systems being hybrid architectures. Really, this should be called hot topic 2a. It is productive, high-level software that has allowed the test system designer the freedom to choose the most appropriate mix of buses that meets the needs of the application rather than be forced to accept a “one size fits all” solution.

4: The Death of the Trade Show – murder, suicide or long-term illness
Let’s face it – the trade show in the UK electronics sector is all but dead. Yes – I know – you can point to Nepcon, and now National Electronics Week as well as Embedded Systems Show, MTEC and a lot of regional or niche events. But really – you have to admit even these are not a patch on what we used to have. And we all know who killed the trade show – the internet. But it had accomplices – pressure of shortened design cycles, lack of innovation from trade show organisers and chronically poor venues (I hate the NEC!). Should you mourn their passing? Or should you just move on and take advantage of the new user-defined ways of interacting with suppliers by patronising those companies willing to address your individual needs with onsite visits and customised web experiences.