T&M Main | Archive | More Columns | Feedback

Engineers Define Their Demands: Accurate Hardware

Page 1 of 2

and Simple Software

An annual report from Keithley Instruments, Cleveland, Ohio.

Engineers aren't changing much about the types of measurements they make. But they certainly are changing how they're making their measurements.

Engineers aren't changing too much about the types of measurements they make, but they're changing how the measurements are made. That's one of the conclusions of this year's Measurement Needs Tracking Survey, an annual study conducted by Keithley Instruments to chart trends and market needs for measurement products and technologies used by engineers and scientists.

Keithley's study, now in its fifth year, was conducted in October of 2000. It includes comments from 631 respondents. That's a 16 percent response rate.

While engineers reported many of the same hardware specification needs, they continue to gravitate toward the simplest approaches when analyzing and moving data. More often than not, they prefer to use approaches that are industry-standard, and readily available and simple to use.

Engineers in this year's, as well as last year's, study cited essentially the same needs for speed and resolution. Though each year since 1998 respondents predicted the need for faster measurement speed (greater than 10,000 readings/second) and higher resolution (19+ bits, and 5-1/2 digits) would double, actual usage at predicted levels hasn't materialized.

Accuracy Rules
Back to top

That doesn't hold true, however, for accuracy, where predictions that engineers would be making more accurate measurements has, in fact, come to pass. Current usage for high accuracy readings has steadily climbed during the past three years, to 32 percent who currently require readings at 0.10 percent of full scale. There are twice as many engineers (55 percent) who forecast that they would require this level of accuracy in the next one to three years.

(Click here for large view.)

"The consistent yearly increase in accuracy mirrors what we see in both development labs and on the production floor, says David H. Patricy, vice president of Keithley. "High speed and high resolution measurements are critical, but as devices continue to miniaturize and manufacturing quality indices continue to be pressured, our customers increasingly incorporate high-precision instrumentation into test systems."

USB Arrives
Back to top

The way engineers are networking their instruments contains some of the greatest changes in the survey's year-to-year rankings. Actual Universal Serial Bus (USB) measurement usage (not predicted usage) exploded during 2000, rising from seven percent in last year's study to 23 percent today.

Serial port usage remained high at 79 percent, with virtually no erosion. Ethernet adoption as a network choice continued its march, from 38 percent three years ago to 54 percent field usage today.

The IEEE-488 bus appears to have reached a plateau at 45 percent, nearly the same as the 46 percent ranking from 1998. The 4-20 mA current loop standard also remains relatively steady, and the remainder of bus options, including FireWire, don't appear to be major players.

(Click here for large view.)

Engineers appear to be happy about their decision to use Ethernet, as it scored the highest mean score in user satisfaction (3.7 out of 5.0) out of the twelve communication protocols listed, marking the first time Ethernet held the top spot alone.

Predictions Come True

Back to top

"Engineers' predictions are coming true," notes Patricy. "They forecasted the movement to Ethernet and USB in each of the past few studies. The next significant change they're forecasting is adoption of FireWire for data transfer, and we also expect it to grow during the next two years. That rate of growth will determine whether FireWire will surpass USB usage or complement it. Customer comments don't provide a clear picture for the industry on that point yet."

User satisfaction scores for USB and FireWire both were relatively high for a new technology: 3.4 out of 5.0 and 3.5, respectively. User satisfaction scores were equal to long-time standards such as GPIB or serial port approaches. "These network choices may be characterized by a smooth ramp-up and minimal learning curve," adds Patricy.

Ethernet also remains the standard of choice in plants with installed centralized communications networks. Since the survey began, there's been virtually no movement in the number of plants that have installed a data communication standard, at roughly half. Of those, 81 percent have standardized on Ethernet.

Next >>

Home | Column | Product of the Week | Editorial | Application Note

		Click here to get your listing up.