What are Instrument Drivers and I/O Software?

Instrument Drivers
One of the most important components in test systems today is instrument driver software. Instrument drivers perform communication to and control of the system instrument hardware. With instrument drivers, you have a high-level, easy-to-use programming model that gives you complete access to the complex measurement capabilities of instruments via an intuitive API. In the past, test programmers spent a significant amount of time and money writing this software from scratch for each instrument in their test system. Today, instrument drivers are delivered as modular, off-the-shelf components that you can use in your test programs.

IVI
The latest in instrument driver technology, based on the well established VISA standard, adds new capabilities for state caching and multithreading for higher performance, simulation to increase productivity, and instrument interchangeability. IVI sits above the VISA I/O layer in the program hierarchy and is integrated into the application development environments that National Instruments provides. Perhaps the biggest benefit of IVI is the potential savings in time and money that it can provide you. By using IVI, with its standardized software interface for popular instruments, you can concentrate on writing the actual test code instead of spending time writing the instrument communication software from scratch for each instrument in your system.

VISA
VISA, a comprehensive package, configures, programs, and troubleshoots instrumentation systems comprised of GPIB, VXI, PXI, Serial, Ethernet, and/or USB interfaces. VISA provides the programming interface between the hardware and development environments such as LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, and Measurement Studio for Microsoft Visual Studio. NI-VISA is the National Instruments implementation of the VISA I/O standard. This software includes software libraries, interactive utilities such as NI Spy and the VISA Interactive Control, and configuration programs through Measurement and Automation Explorer for all your development needs. NI-VISA is standard across the National Instruments product line. With NI-VISA, you can feel confident that your software development will not become obsolete as your instrumentation interface hardware needs evolve into the future.