© National Instruments Corporation 1-1 MXI-4 Series User Manual
1
Introduction
This chapter describes the MXI-4 series of products, lists what you need to
get started, and explains how to unpack and set up your hardware.
The fourproducts in this series are the PCI-8331, PXI-8331, PCI-8336, and
PXI-8336. For the remainder of this manual the term MXI-4 card will refer
to any of the products in the MXI-4 series.
MXI-4 cards must always be installed as either a pair of PXI cards or as a
PCI card and a PXI card. The term MXI-4 dyad will refer to one of the four
allowable pairings of MXI-4 cards which are described in the Conventions
section of the About This Manual.

About the MXI-4 Series

Description and Features

A MXI-4 dyad is a PCI master/slave implementing the PCI-PCI bridge
register set. It couples two physically separate buses with either a copper or
fiber-optic data link capable of 1.5 Gbit/s serial data rates. With the MXI-4
dyad, you can do the following:
•Control a PXI/CompactPCI backplane with a PCI based PC
• Control a PXI/CompactPCI backplane with another PXI/CompactPCI
system
• Increase the available number CompactPCI or PXI slots for your
application
• Physically separate the measurement or automation system from
ah ost PC
• Combine PCI, CompactPCI, and PXI devices in the same system