When a new instrument architecture becomes available, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to integrate it with your existing equipment. This integration hesitation helps explain why system creators continue to purchase large quantities of GPIB-based instruments even when LXI and modular alternatives exist for almost any instrument type. An important underlying cause of that hesitation is the beauty of software compatibility with existing test code. In recent years, instrument vendors have gotten better at offering compatibility modes that allow you to move from an old instrument to a newer, faster, more capable model. As a user, you probably follow a two-step migration process. First, you decide to evaluate the new instrument but keep it on the same interface. Once you are convinced that your test programs will migrate without too much difficulty, the second step is deciding if or when to move to the new LXI interface. Because this is a two-step process, there's a high probability that you won't ever complete the migration. For example, if performance is good enough, then you will keep the old interface along with the old program when you build a new test system. This approach probably won't maximize the potential performance gains from the new instrument, but you won't—and shouldn't—waste hours, days, or weeks writing and debugging code to make it work with the new interface.
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