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The IVI Foundation is an open consortium founded to promote specifications for programming test instruments that simplify interchangeability, provide better performance, and reduce the cost of program development and maintenance.

Getting Started

For information on the IVI standards, see Getting Started.

For information to get started using IVI drivers, see the IVI Getting Started Guide (PDF).

What is IVI?

The IVI Foundation develops and maintains diverse standards that simplify test system development and maintenance when using software and hardware components from multiple vendors. These standards include:

  • General purpose standards regarding instrument drivers for use in various development environments. That establish a high standard for the quality and completeness of those drivers. Including an industry-wide registration mechanism for all conformant instrument drivers.

  • Standards that specify APIs of specific classes of instruments that facilitate interchanging instruments.

  • The SCPI standard which specifies the strings that can be sent to instruments to control them.

  • Standards regarding APIs used in programs that control instruments to send and receive the strings specified by SCPI.

  • Standards related to how messages are transferred between instruments and computers.