What is the difference between compactPCI and PXI?

[Bazingaaaa]

I know that PXI utilizes the PCI bus alongwith the rugged eurocards defined in the compactPCI standards.

However, I was looking through some images of compactPCI systems and they look similar to the PXI standard. 

My question over here may seem very noob but I was not able to find much information on the web when I search for compactPCI vs PXI.

There has to be some modifications over compactPCI which led to the PXI architecture. I also like to know how does compactPCI work, like apart from the chassis, what acted like a controller? Were compactPCI controllers(similar to PXI controllers) available? It will be great if someone can share a pic of a compactPCI system, I mean complete chassis, controller and cards? I browsed through some web links such as

http://www.advantech.in/products/f4e1e7e3-e02f-4de1-a5ad-c84e1e122a46/mic-3106/mod_610d8fcb-ee5c-457...

which looked quite similar to a PXI system and I am not able to figure out the difference between the two.

Is it that the chassis backplane in a PXI system is a compactPCI and the other features like cooling, power, drivers and software architecture are different?

Or are the clocks, triggers, star triggers properties of PXI and not of compact PCI. I know PXI (because it is implemented on cPCI) is backwards compatible to cPCI, which means all features of cPCI should be there on PXI. I want to know what features are additional in PXI over cPCI.

Any leads or relevant links to see will be appreciated.

Thanks !

[crossrulz]

The clocks and triggers are not part of the cPCI standard.  That is where PXI comes in.  Coincidentally, many of your cPCI cards will work in many of your PXI chassis.

[kamlesh1]

Hi @Bazingaa,

              I agree with crossrulz. PXI is specifically made for measurement and test, having said that cPCI is used for Industrial computing applications.

There are several differences between these; while building your application, you always have to look for the best platform suited.

I believe, this will be a nice read for you.

http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3499/en/

Regards,

Kamlesh,

AE, NI India