Remote procedure call-based solution for very fast data transfer from test instruments

Tektronix, Inc. offers a new RPC-based solution, TekHSI, for faster data transfer from testing instruments to a user's PC.

Demonstrating the company's commitment to providing continuous, cutting-edge test automation advancements, TekHSI (the company's high-speed interface) functions as a new firmware capability on the Tektronix MSO 4B, 5 and 6 Series models (including B and LP instrument renditions). The abstractions provided in TekHSI make it feasible to attain higher data transfer speeds with easy-to-use implementation and scaling abilities, and TekHSI enables its customers to capture the highest performance output from an instrument's physical link, such as Ethernet, and transfer data at higher speeds.

The current test and measurement solutions available need meticulous code optimisation to achieve high data transfer rates. They rely on standard commands for programmable instruments (SCPI) such as curve and curve-stream to move data from instrument to computer. This makes it difficult for test and measurement engineers to maximise the bandwidth of the physical link their instruments are shipped with, typically 1Gbps ethernet. TekHSI supplies an alternative to attaining higher data transfer speeds, with its abstractions making it easy to implement, use, and scale.

"Before the launch of TekHSI, our customers had to depend on SCPI curve and curvestream commands for data transfer, and those methods resulted in workflow bottlenecks for test and measurement engineers working with large record length and sample rate waveform files," said Gaurav Marmat, Tektronix product manager. "TekHSI is based on Google's modern remote procedure call architecture and is intuitive to adopt and scale across test automation needs for faster, more efficient data transfer results. It's an alternative to those complex and slow data transfer options."

The solution is now available through a Python library for automation projects, and the TekScope PC version 2.10 is also available for user interface-based applications.