NI Releases New CompactRIO Systems for High-Volume Machines and Devices


New Integrated Controller and Chassis Lowers Costs for OEM Applications

NEWS RELEASE - Nov. 27, 2007 - National Instruments today announced the release of the new NI cRIO-9072 and cRIO-9074 CompactRIO systems that give engineers and machine builders an ideal solution for rapidly deploying industrial machines at high volume. These new National Instruments CompactRIO systems have an integrated hardware architecture that combines an embedded real-time processor and a reconfigurable FPGA within a single chassis, lowering the cost of CompactRIO for OEM applications. Engineers can quickly 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, eliminating the need for spending unnecessary time and money 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 I/O modules. This standard architecture helps improve the time to market and reliability of machines and embedded devices for machine builders. Using this standard architecture and LabVIEW tools, engineers can rapidly design and prototype industrial monitoring and control machines and embedded devices with flexible, high-performance hardware and quickly deploy to the new cost-optimized cRIO-907x CompactRIO systems to reduce deployment costs. 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.

"The CompactRIO embedded system and LabVIEW graphical tools from National Instruments gave us the power to design, prototype and deploy the control system within our Visica2 medical device quickly and beat our time-to-market goals while saving money by eliminating the need for building custom hardware," said Jeff Stevens, Principal Systems Engineer at Sanarus Medical. "The standard embedded RIO [reconfigurable I/O] architecture and new low-cost hardware like the cRIO-907x systems help us even further by allowing us to quickly move to lower-cost hardware when deploying our machines at high volume without having to redesign software or start over from scratch with a new design."

To reduce the cost of CompactRIO for high-volume applications, NI engineers designed the new cRIO-907x systems as integrated systems, with the embedded real-time processor and FPGA chip on the same printed circuit board (PCB) rather than multiple PCBs as in traditional CompactRIO systems. The new cRIO-9072 integrated system combines an industrial 266 MHz real-time processor and an eight-slot chassis with an embedded, reconfigurable 1M gate FPGA chip. The new NI cRIO-9074 integrated system contains a 400 MHz real-time processor and an 8-slot chassis with an embedded, reconfigurable 2M gate FPGA chip.

                             NI cRIO-9072                            NI cRIO-9074 
CPU speed 266 MHz 400 MHz
DRAM memory type 64 MB 128 MB
Nonvolatile storage 128 MB 256 MB
Ethernet port(s) Single 10/100 Dual 10/100
Serial port Single RS232 Single RS232
FPGA size 1M gates 2M gates
C Series module slots 8 slots 8 slots
DC input power Single 19 to 30 VDC Single 19 to 30 VDC
Temperature range -20 to 55 °C -20 to 55 °C
Shock/vibration ratings 50 g shock, 5 g vibration 50 g shock, 5 g vibration
Price List price (qty 1) = $1,999 (USD)
OEM pricing (qty 100) = $1,299 (USD) List Price (qty 1) = $2,999 (USD)
OEM pricing (qty 100) = $1,899 (USD)

About NI CompactRIO

CompactRIO is a high-performance embedded control and acquisition platform powered by graphical system design for advanced applications where small size, low cost and reliability are crucial. CompactRIO is powered by National Instruments LabVIEW FPGA and LabVIEW Real-Time technologies that give users the ability to design, develop and deploy custom embedded systems for a variety of industries such as automotive, mil/aero, industrial and machine control and embedded systems prototyping. The CompactRIO programmable automation controller (PAC) delivers unprecedented control acquisition capabilities in a compact, rugged package. For more information on CompactRIO, readers can visit http://www.ni.com/compactrio.

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 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 4,500 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past eight years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

Pricing and Contact Information

NI cRIO-9072
Priced from $1,999; 1,749; ¥269,000

NI cRIO-9074
Priced from $2,999; 2,649; ¥403,000

Contact Sales:
E-mail: info@ni.com

Web: http://www.ni.com/compactrio

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