National Instruments releases LabVIEW 8.6, the latest version of the graphical system design software platform for control, test and embedded system development, focusing on the benefits of multicore processors, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and wireless communication.

“To meet the performance and efficiency demands of cutting-edge applications from robotics to designing hybrid vehicles, users must have the ability to quickly incorporate the latest technologies such as multicore processors, FPGAs and wireless communication,” said Dr. James Truchard, president, CEO and cofounder of National Instruments. “LabVIEW offers the shortest path to apply these technologies using parallel programming while providing users the flexibility to define their solutions with application-specific optimisations.”

The new version offers supercomputing performance through multicore-optimised features which can help engineers process increasing amounts of measurement data to meet advanced control application challenges and increase test system throughput.

To increase performance, LabVIEW 8.6 includes more than 1,200 newly-optimised advanced analysis functions that offer faster, enhanced math and signal processing on multicore systems for control and test applications. Vision applications also can benefit from multicore systems by using innovative image processing functions included in the NI Vision Development Module for LabVIEW 8.6 that automatically distributes data sets across multiple cores. Also using new multicore features, test engineers can develop applications to test wireless devices up to four times faster with the latest version of the NI Modulation Toolkit for LabVIEW and control system engineers can execute simulation models in parallel up to five times faster with the LabVIEW 8.6 Control Design and Simulation Module. Additionally, engineers now can better identify parallel sections of code using a new feature that reorganizes LabVIEW diagrams.

With the intuitive dataflow paradigm of LabVIEW, engineers can use the LabVIEW FPGA Module and FPGA-based commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware such as NI CompactRIO to customize measurement and control systems for increased performance in applications such as semiconductor validation and advanced machine control. LabVIEW 8.6 continues to make FPGAs more accessible to domain experts without experience in low-level hardware description languages or board-level design.

And as wireless technology advances, engineers have the opportunity to take measurements in isolated locations. Using wireless technology with LabVIEW 8.6, engineers can extend applications into new areas of data acquisition, such as environmental and structural monitoring. The flexibility of LabVIEW graphical programming and the ubiquity of Wi-Fi network infrastructure make it easy to incorporate wireless connectivity into new or existing PC-based measurement and control systems.

With support for the latest wireless data acquisition devices and drivers for more than 20 third-party wireless sensors, LabVIEW 8.6 simplifies programming of distributed measurement systems with a single software platform. Engineers now can configure data acquisition applications easily to use NI Wi-Fi data acquisition (DAQ) hardware without making code changes in LabVIEW 8.6. New 3-D visualization tools in LabVIEW 8.6 help engineers integrate remote measurements with design models to accelerate design validation.

For more invormation, www.ni.com/labview86.

Leave a comment