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New Features on Switch Executive 2.0

Primary Software: Switch Executive
Primary Software Version: N/A
Primary Software Fixed Version: N/A
Secondary Software: N/A

Problem:
What is the difference between old versions of NI Switch Executive and NI Switch Executive 2.0?

Solution:
NI Switch Executive 2.0 New Features

NI Switch Executive enhances several key features and offers many new features designed for high-density switch system development. The following are just some of the new features in Switch Executive designed to help you develop switch systems faster:

User Interface Redesign: The NI Switch Executive (NISE) interface has been greatly enhanced to make switch system configuration much more intuitive. Several key features added to the new user interface include:


1. Keyboard navigation within tables
   
2. NI Switch Executive Virtual Devices folder under Devices and Interfaces in Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) that organizes all virtual devices.
   
3. All switch modules in a virtual device are easily viewed and have been organized as sub-nodes to the virtual device in MAX.
   
4. Streamlining of 5 NISE 1.0 tabs to 3 NISE 2.0 tabs.
   
5. Right-click options on virtual devices in MAX including adding a new switch module, exporting the virtual device for deployment or more advanced features such as reopening the session to a switch module.
   
6. Routes/Groups tab now organizes routes and route groups in a tree control that displays the hierarchal relationship between the routes and the routes groups.
   
7. Inclusion of a “Revert” option to roll-back to a previously saved version of NI Switch Executive (a pseudo undo).
   
8. “Channels Only” button to simplify routes view in graphical routing editor. Also useful when screen real-estate is limited.
   

Channel Exclusions: Channel exclusions in NI Switch Executive 2.0 have been dramatically improved. There are now two different exclusion mechanisms that cover many of the possibilities of controlling channel routing. The two channel exclusion mechanisms are:


1. Mutual Exclusions: A mutual exclusion set is a set of channels that has been selected from the list of available channels that can not be connected together. For example, a mutual exclusion set can be created and called “SourceChannels” in which all the channels in the set represent sourcing signals and are not to be connected (Similar to “Source” channel configuration in NI Switch Executive 1.0)
   
   
2. Set Exclusions: Set exclusions are a different type of exclusion mechanism. In set exclusions, you create two sets of channels. All channels within each set can be routed together; however channels from two different sets can not be routed together. To create set exclusions of more than two sets, each permutation of two different sets must be created.


By incorporating different mutual and set exclusions, very sophisticated routing control can be achieved.

Design-Time Performance Increase: NI Switch Executive 2.0 is anywhere from 50-100 times faster at channel routing than NI Switch Executive 1.0. This is particularly important in large switch system development. In a benchmark of routing two channels in a 10 switch module system, NISE 2.0 took around 2 seconds versus NISE 1.0 which took nearly 3 minutes. This performance increase is directly related to the optimization of the routing engine. There is also a new option in NI Switch Executive to select the “search depth” of the routing engine. This option instructs the engine how thorough the search for a given route between two channels should be. Also, there is an option to defer all updates to a route when configuration changes are made. This drastically improves performance on large systems such that all routes are not re-determined each time a change is made.

Run-Time Performance Increase: The overhead of making a switch call has also been reduced from NISE 1.0 to NISE 2.0. The estimated cost of making a single NI Switch Executive call is 500us (system dependent). However, this value becomes insignificant as the number of relays in the NI Switch Executive call increases. This is because 500us divides over the number of relay calls handled by the single NISE call. For example, if an NISE route group contains 10 routes that switch 2 relays each, the overhead of the NISE call becomes 500us/20 = 25us.

Buses: Buses are also a new addition to the software which makes connecting multiple switch modules much easier. A bus is a software structure that identifies how switch modules are physically connected together. To illustrate this, if the columns of 2 switch modules are to be combined to create a larger switch matrix (column expansion) the rows of the two switches must be connected together. In NISE 1.0, this was accomplished by defining hardwires between each of the corresponding channels on each switch module. However, in large switch systems where the number of connections is greater than 10, the task becomes cumbersome. Buses essentially provide a mechanism to identify an entire set of adjacent channels on a switch module to be connected to an entire set of adjacent channels on a second switch module.

Batch Rename: Batch rename allows the user to select multiple channels from the list of available IVI channels and rename them using a base name and index (example: DMM1, DMM2, DMM3...). The order of channels can be manipulated to arbitrarily name the selected set of channels. This is particularly useful in creating large systems with multiple devices under test or switch systems with duplicate setups.

Related Links: Switch Executive 2.0 Product Page
NI Switch Executive: Switch Management & Control
What's New in NI Switch Executive 2.1

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Report Date: 11/09/2004
Last Updated: 08/06/2007
Document ID: 3F8HIT0M

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