NEWS RELEASE – Oct. 7, 2008 – National Instruments today introduced the industry’s first Mac-compatible GPIB-USB-HS controller as well as a low-profile PCI Express GPIB controller. With the NI GPIB-USB-HS, Mac users now can control their stand-alone instruments from Mac laptops and desktops with the flexibility and transfer rates of a portable GPIB-USB-HS interface. Additionally, the new NI PCIe-GPIB/Low-Profile (LP) controller gives engineers and scientists a high-performance, RoHS-compliant controller that uses approximately 75 percent less power and is manufactured using 63 percent less printed circuit board (PCB) material than previous models.

National Instruments began developing GPIB products in 1976 so engineers and scientists could control their instruments from desktop PCs regardless of vendor. Today, GPIB remains one of the industry’s most popular instrument control buses, and now, with the GPIB-USB-HS, NI is the first manufacturer to help Mac users take advantage of their USB ports to control thousands of stand-alone GPIB instruments. The controller supports both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh laptops and desktops and is compatible with the Mac OS X operating system.

“As one who prefers the Apple Mac operating system, I am thrilled to have the option for the GPIB-USB-HS to communicate with our lab equipment,” said Dr. Scott Hannahs, an instrumentation physicist who has used the NI LabVIEW graphical programming environment on the Mac for many years. “Previously, we could only use Mac workstations with PCI cards, and this release now makes available the HS488 supported GPIB-USB family of devices, giving us more portable, compatible and flexible solutions. The Mac-friendly NI GPIB-USB-HS helps us set up, debug and run experiments efficiently, so we can concentrate on our measurements and results instead of worrying about data communication and setup issues, which saves us time and manpower in the lab.”

Additionally, NI introduced the new, smaller NI PCIe-GPIB/LP controller for Windows Vista/XP/2000, Mac OS X, Linux® and Solaris operating systems. The adoption of today’s smaller PCs and gravitation toward PCI Express slots necessitate the invention of smaller controllers. The RoHS-compliant NI PCIe-GPIB/LP offers the same high-performance specifications as its PCI Express predecessor but in a significantly smaller form factor. Using 75 percent less operating power and manufactured with 63 percent less PCB material, the NI PCIe-GPIB/LP maintains advanced transfer rates of >1.5 MB/s (IEEE 488.1) and >7.9 MB/s (HS488) for maximum performance.

Both the NI GPIB-USB-HS and the NI PCIe-GPIB/LP controllers can be programmed with the easy-to-use LabVIEW graphical system design platform, the NI LabWindows™/CVI ANSI C integrated development environment and NI Measurement Studio software for Microsoft Visual Studio.

For more information about the new GPIB controllers, readers may visit www.ni.com/gpib.

About National Instruments
National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 4,800 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past nine years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

Pricing and Contact Information

NI GPIB-USB-HS controller priced* from $549; €549; ¥64,000	Contact Sales: www.ni.com/contact
NI PCIe-GPIB/LP controller priced* from $549; €549; ¥64,000	E-mail: info@ni.com
Web: www.ni.com/gpib