Last month, the LXI Consortium held its first open membership meeting, which was attended by more than 20 industry-leading test and measurement corporations from the United States, Europe and Asia. The membership is now at 14 companies only a month from inception. The latest to join the standards organization as a strategic member is Rohde & Schwarz. As a major player in test and measurement instruments, systems and measurement solutions, Rohde & Schwarz expands the base of companies supporting the development of the LXI standard. The standard is a next-generation, LAN-based modular platform for automated test systems.

"We strongly support the move to open standards for modular instrument platforms," said Roland Steffen, executive vice president of Rohde & Schwarz' T&M division. "LAN is a ubiquitous interface in today's test and measurement world, and LXI's LAN-based architecture provides the basis for flexible, modular instruments for aerospace, defense and communications. Additional membership commitments are expected."

Other members include Aeroflex, Agilent Technologies, Analogic, Bruel & Kjaer, California Instruments, Complete Networks, Elgar Electronics Corporation, IOTech, Keithley Instruments, Measurement Computing Corp., Phase Matrix, Pickering Interfaces, Teradyne and VXI Technology.

Technical and marketing committees were formed during the meeting with a planned formal specification release during the first quarter of 2005. Fundamental changes in the scope of the specification were also adopted, aimed at addressing a much broader range of industry application areas. Instrumentation designers will now have the flexibility to develop LXI-compliant hardware tailored for their application, whether it is portable, benchtop, distributed or rack-and-stack in a scalable, modular format.

"We are very excited about the results of this initial meeting and continued support of this industry standards group," said Bob Vogel, of Aeroflex and strategic member of the LXI Consortium. "We are pleased at the level of participation that contributed to a high energy forum to discuss the details and direction of the specification."

"LAN-based instruments are in our laboratories now and will soon be in the hands of our customers" said Ben Bailey, of MCC and a strategic member of the LXI Consortium. "By joining together in the LXI Consortium to define standards for communication and data organization between LAN-based instruments and computers, we are ensuring that every customer in this mixed-vendor world will be able to purchase, with confidence, products that work together and with all the popular software platforms. So this is what the LXI Consortium and standard is really about. It is not about technical breakthroughs or controlling the market; it is about promising our customers a trouble-free experience no matter who they purchase from."

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