Pacific MindWorks Helps Speed the Agilent 34980A to Market
"Pacific MindWorks delivered as promised and made a large contribution to the successful
launch of the 34980A," Greg Parets, Agilent Project Manager.
Why did Agilent Technologies, a leader in the test and measurement industry, choose
to outsource the development of IVI drivers for its cutting edge 34980A switch and
measurement mainframe? Because Agilent recognized that the shortest path to success
was working with an acknowledged IVI technology expert, Pacific MindWorks.
"The Agilent 34980A is a remarkably capable switch and measurement device," said
Greg Parets, Agilent Program Manager, "and it is vital to our customers that it
be software compatible with all leading test development environments and switch
management applications. This requires our drivers to be complaint with three architecturally
incompatible specifications: IVI-COM, IVI-C, and LabVIEW."
Overcoming Complexity
Faced with tight deadlines and the challenge of developing three different drivers,
Agilent turned to Pacific MindWorks. "We knew from our past experience with Pacific
MindWorks that the company would be able to meet our needs. Their work with the
IVI Foundation combined with their practical experience enabled them to swiftly
address the technical challenges of this project."
Pacific MindWorks used their IVI driver development tool, Nimbus, to create a single
code base that supports both the IVI-COM and IVI-C driver specifications. Nimbus-generated
drivers are well suited to 34980A’s modular architecture - the 34980A offers nineteen
different plug-in modules that are mixed and matched by the customer to create a
custom switching and control system (eight modules can be installed at any one time).
The driver must dynamically adapt to each unique configuration without user intervention.
Nimbus divides the driver into multiple DLLs—one for the 34980A’s base functionality
and one for each of the plug-in modules. Only the DLLs that are needed for a specific
configuration are loaded. This results in a smaller memory footprint and also avoids
COM versioning problems.
A Team of One
Pacific MindWorks became an integral part of the 34980A development team developing
the drivers concurrently with the product. This meant that as the product firmware
evolved, the driver development also needed to track the product’s capability. Pacific
MindWorks was very flexible and skillfully dealt with the ebb and flow of the project.
They also effectively bridged the gap between competing test and measurement vendors,
acting as a neutral third party to pull the right information together to ensure
compatibility. The team did an outstanding job of handling the unexpected and provided
just-in-time delivery of the drivers and other deliverables.
"Pacific MindWorks met their schedule commitments. Part of this success can be attributed
to the strong relationship they built with our engineers. We provided an expert
on the product who worked closely with their development team. When we were unable
to get Pacific MindWorks the very latest hardware, they even ran tests on our hardware
remotely and led interactive debugging sessions with our engineers over the Internet."
Outstanding Results
"Our experience with Pacific MindWorks on the 34980A project has further strengthened
our long-standing relationship," concluded Parets. "They bring powerful tools and
extensive knowledge of IVI to the table."