Software offers Express VIs that run on PDAs and FPGAs.

National Instruments Corp. May 28, 2003

Press Release Summary:

LabVIEW 7 Express reduces development time via 40+ Express VIs that encapsulate measurement functionality for common measurement and automation applications. Software employs NI-DAQ driver framework and 2 interactive assistants for data acquisition and instrument control. Real-Time Module develops deterministic, real-time, and embedded control applications, while Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module develops distributed monitoring and control applications.

Original Press Release:

National Instruments Releases LabVIEW 7 Express

New Express VIs Deliver Dramatic Productivity Gains; Lab VIEW VIs Now Run on PDAs and FPGAs

AUSTIN, Texas - May 20, 2003 - National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI), a global leader in virtual instrumentation, today announced LabVIEW 7 Express, a major upgrade to the entire family of LabVIEW graphical development products. A culmination of four years of engineering effort, LabVIEW 7 Express dramatically simplifies the creation of measurement and automation applications and extends LabVIEW to a wider range of targets, from embedded FPGAs to Palm OS and Microsoft Pocket PC PDAs.

"The innovation behind LabVIEW 7 Express is incredible," said Albert Geven, engineering manager of the test and measurement automation group at Royal Philips Electronics. "In the 10 years that I have used LabVIEW, I have never seen such a large leap in productivity in a single version upgrade. Not only did features such as Express VIs and the new data acquisition framework help us reduce development time, they made it easy for colleagues who had never used LabVIEW to step in and begin programming immediately."

Designed to reduce development time for new and experienced users alike, Express VIs encapsulate measurement functionality in easy-to-use, interactive virtual instruments for the most common measurement and automation applications. More than 40 powerful Express VIs streamline development for tasks ranging from data acquisition to signal analysis to file I/O, delivering the power of advanced measurement functions in easy-to-configure dialogs requiring little or no programming.

"Before LabVIEW, engineers and scientists had to make a tradeoff between the power, flexibility and scalability of traditional programming languages and the ease-of-use and interactivity of configuration-based tools," said Dr. James Truchard, NI president and CEO. "With the release of LabVIEW 7 Express, we are closing the gap between easy and powerful, bringing an exceptional level of productivity and performance to engineers at all experience levels and in all areas of measurement and automation."

Acquiring real-world data is at the core of most measurement and automation systems. While LabVIEW has always simplified this process for users, this version redefines how they make measurements and. analyze their data. With a redesigned NI-DAQ driver framework and two new interactive assistants for data acquisition and instrument control, LabVIEW 7 Express makes taking measurements and obtaining meaningful information from them easier and faster than ever before.

For computer-based data acquisition systems, the DAQ Assistant helps users configure and define sophisticated data acquisition tasks with the ease of a few mouse clicks. For GPIB, Serial, VXI and other traditional instruments, users can use the Instrument I/O Assistant to prototype instrument control systems, take quick measurements and even develop simple instrument drivers. The Instrument I/O Assistant delivers interactive instrument control, autoparsing of data and automatic LabVIEW code generation.

The release of LabVIEW 7 Express product family includes the LabVIEW Base, Full and Professional Development Systems as well as the following LabVIEW add-on modules:

o New LabVIEW 7 FPGA Module - LabVIEW for developing applications to run in FPGAs on NI reconfigurable I/O hardware
o New LabVIEW 7 PDA Module - LabVIEW for creating portable handheld measurement and control applications on Microsoft Pocket PC or Palm OS PDAs
o Upgraded LabVIEW 7 Real-Time Module - LabVIEW for developing deterministic, real-time and embedded control applications
o Upgraded LabVIEW 7 Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module - LabVIEW for developing distributed monitoring and control applications

About LabVIEW
Since 1986, NI LabVIEW has redefined measurement and automation with its unique graphical development methodology. Noted as one of the one of the top 50 electronic industry milestones in the past 50 years by Electronic Design magazine, LabVIEW delivers an intuitive and powerful way to acquire, analyze and present measurement data in every stage of development, from prototyping to design to manufacturing test. LabVIEW is available on Windows, Macintosh OS X, Sun Solaris and Linux operating systems.

About National Instruments
National Instruments (http://ni.com) is a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation - a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists approach measurement and automation. Leveraging the PC and it's related technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for customers worldwide through easy-to-integrate software, such as the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment, and modular hardware, such as PXI modules for data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,000 employees and direct operations in 40 countries. In 2002, the company sold products to more than 25,000 different companies in more than 80 counties around the world. For the past four consecutive years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

Readers may obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department at (512) 683-5090, by sending e-mail to nati@ni.com or on the Web at ni.com/nati.

LabVIEW(TM), NI(TM), ni.com(TM) and NI-DAQ(TM) are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.