Benches® platform is a laboratory information management and control system, capable of both orchestrating and controlling complex interactions between disparate pieces of lab equipment and managing their configuration. While OEM (original equipment manufacturer) solutions exist to interact with and automate the operation of individual pieces of equipment, experiments often require the use of multiple pieces of equipment. Using OEM solutions requires users to run a standalone vendor tool to interact with each piece of equipment, or alternatively, write a patchwork of scripts that each automate the operation of a single piece of equipment in isolation. Similarly, the data captured from equipment using the OEM tools is not consistent between tools and may be stored in proprietary formats.
Conversely, Benches® platform provides a unifying framework, including a remotely accessible web-based user interface, scripting support, and integrated interfaces for many types of equipment, that enables users to easily run complex experiments where multiple pieces of equipment are operating in unison. Additionally, the data captured with Benches® platform is centralized and stored in a consistent format to facilitate analysis and collaboration. Benches® platform also provides facilities to manage user access to both lab equipment and experiment data.
Benches® platform allows for multiple users to connect to lab equipment over a network. In addition, Benches® platform provides centralized storage for experiments conducted on equipment and devices under test.
Benches Platform Manages Your Lab
Benches® platform is a laboratory information management and control system, orchestrating and controlling complex interactions between disparate pieces of lab equipment and managing their configuration. Benches® platform also enables and manages user access to lab equipment and experiment results.
Benches Platform Provides Access to Your Lab
Using a web-based interface, Benches® platform allows users to interact with lab equipment from anywhere. Network capable equipment enables Benches® platform to manage equipment at multiple sites. Older equipment can make use of Benches® platform client interfaces to join an experiment.
Benches Platform Maximizes Your Resource Utilization
In the Benches® platform, equipment at multiple locations can be added to a single lab station, allowing the creation of virtual lab stations. These superset lab stations can be reconfigured at any time – adding and removing equipment from different sites as needed.
With the combined equipment in a virtual lab station, Benches® platform enables running experiments and capturing data using these virtual lab stations and therefore increasing your equipment and resource utilization by removing the need to physically reconfigure lab equipment or transfer it between lab sites.
Benches Platform Enables Your Experiments
Benches® platform provides a web-based shell interface to run interactive or scripted experiments on the connected lab equipment. Experiments can be run interactively with real-time visualizations of captured data.
Benches® platform also provides Python integration to allow users to define custom behavior beyond what is provided by the shell or to run scripted experiments rather than having to interact directly with the shell. These custom scripts have access to, and operate on, real-time measurements from the experiment.
In addition to user customizable behavior, Benches® platform will soon offer native support for SoC fault injection and radiation testing workflows.
Benches Platform Captures Your Digital Threads
Benches® platform stores all data captured during experiments to enable analysis of results. The captured data includes measurements from equipment interfaces, files sent to devices (e.g., bitstream), and files received from devices (e.g., CSV).
Additionally, Benches® platform also captures the operations performed during the experiments. The combined operations and data form the digital thread of the experiment. Not only is the experiment digital thread captured, but Benches® platform also supports exporting the digital thread as an archive for offline analysis or experiment replication.
Benches Platform Analyzes Your Data
Benches® platform provides visualizations of captured real-time data to assist in analyzing experiment results. These visualizations can be customized to display different chart and graph types as well as plot multiple series. In addition to visualization customization, the data itself can be customized via user transforms. Benches® allows users to define transforms in Python to leverage the existing data science ecosystem and gain unique insights from their experiments.
Benches Platform Supports Your Collaboration
Benches® platform supports exporting an experiment digital thread as an archive for third-party analysis or other external use outside of Benches® platform. This digital thread archive can also be imported into another Benches® platform installation to facilitate collaboration between partner labs or other outside parties. The imported digital thread can be used to demonstrate reproducibility of experiments or independently verify results.
Benches Platform Deploys on Your Terms
Benches® platform supports multiple deployment scenarios – including cloud, local on-premise, and isolated network strategies. Deploy Benches® platform in your environment and in your network without having to change it. Benches® platform is designed to fit into your setup, not make you change your setup to fit Benches® platform.
More Information
Request our whitepaper on Benches® platform! If you’d like to contact us about using Benches® platform, or if you have a product support question, you can inquire here!