Tuesday keynote: Just do more

[Dave Brown]

Efficient, smart innovation in challenging times was the consistent refrain in today’s keynote presentations. Dr. Truchard kicked things off by calling out the challenges of today’s economy, citing that “the models used by traders didn’t take into account the real world.” John Graff, NI VP of marketing echoed that sentiment with, “Financial engineers have screwed things up…. Now is the opportunity for real engineers and real scientists, and the real drivers of innovation to step up.”

Dr. Truchard mentioned how there is “nowhere but up from here” with regards to creative engineering, especially in this economy, and moved on to detail the many innovations NI has brought to market over the years and alluded to the many new products NI is bringing to market this year. He mentioned how NI is helping using algorithm engineering to eliminate artificial complexity and streamline all types of computational processes. He added how new NI products are focusing on using real-time, real-world parallel architectures to drive increased performance. Here's a short clip from this part of the keynote:

Graff then brought up numerous NI R&D presenters to unveil a variety of new products, beginning, of course, with LabVIEW 2009. He then moved on to LabVIEW MathScript RT, X Series boards, the all-new NI VeriStand, as well as multiple new products for wireless and semiconductor test. To illustrate NI contribution to semiconductor test, Analog Devices representatives detailed how NI PXI products and LabVIEW helped them to reduce costs, test time, and environmental impact by at least 10 times.

One highlight I especially enjoyed was the inclusion of the host of Spike TV’s Deadliest Warrior show. This presentation revealed how the show’s engineers used LabVIEW and NI data acquisition to measure the impact of an ancient Chinese weapon, and compared Graff’s swing to that of real warriors. Check out a longer Deadliest Warrior demo today from 1:30-2 p.m. in the Technology Theater.

Overall, today’s keynote presentations featured too many impressive products and anecdotal performance results to detail here. But suffice it to say that this year’s NI Week will get down and dirty in proving that NI really is facilitating thousands of engineers and scientists in doing more to improve our world, even in these challenging times.

Since today was the big day that really highlighted LabVIEW 2009, you should go read more detail about the new version at the LabVIEW page on ni.com/labview.