Is Your Test Executive Ready for Multicore?
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Multicore processing means improved performance and decreased test times through truly parallel test execution on multiple units or multiple subsystems of a single device. Depending on the readiness of your test executive – the application controlling your test system – multicore processing may also represent a near-impossible performance roadblock. To take advantage of multiple parallel cores, software applications must be multithreaded. Test executives that are not multithreaded are locked into executing on only one core and lose out on potential computing power from the latest processors.
NI TestStand takes advantage of multicore processors through parallel process models and multithreading.
You can take advantage of multicore processors by developing multithreaded test executives with NI TestStand test management software. NI TestStand provides different process models that facilitate multithreaded test system development that can either test multiple units simultaneously to increase throughput or test multiple subsystems concurrently to reduce test time on a device. These process models automatically create separate threads for each device or subsystem, which then execute on different cores. In addition, NI TestStand provides autoscheduling of instrumentation resources across threads. With autoscheduling, you can easily synchronize and communicate instrument usage across all threads to increase instrument use and sharing.
Read a white paper about parallel test systems that take advantage of multicore processors.
This article first appeared in the Q4 2007 issue of Instrumentation Newsletter.
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