Instrumentation III: What makes a good interface?: Flexibility, reasonable cost, and compatibility are musts when interconnecting independently manufactured devices into a workable system

As marketplace pressures have mounted for more sophisticated and more widely applicable instrumentation systems, the instrument designer has turned to an increasing variety of programmable instruments — this, to the delight of the systems engineer seeking improved performance from system components. But the benefits that should be flowing from these efforts of the designer are not always being realized simply because the communication links that interconnect sets of system components have not been optimized.