New NI LabVIEW taps the power of multicore processors

London – National Instruments has launched LabVIEW 8.5, the latest version of its graphical system design platform for test, control and embedded system development. The product is designed to capitalise on the performance of the latest parallel multicore architectures emerging from the computer industry.

LabVIEW 8.5 features multithreading capabilities that simplify multicore as well as FPGA-based application development via an intuitive parallel dataflow language, said NI. This, it claims, means faster test throughput, more efficient processor-intensive analysis and more reliable real-time systems.

“Engineers and scientists depend on continually improving PC processors, operating systems and bus technologies to drive increased performance in their measurement and control systems,” explained Dr. James Truchard, NI president, CEO and co-founder in a 6 Aug statement.

“With the shift toward multicore processors on the PC, LabVIEW programmers benefit from a simplified graphical approach to multithreading, making it possible for engineers and scientists to maximise the performance of multicore technology with little to no change to their applications,” said Truchard.

The new LabVIEW version extends the platform further into embedded and industrial applications via a new statechart design module for modeling and implementing system behavior as well as new I/O libraries and analysis functions for industrial monitoring and control. Building on the automatic multithreading capability of earlier versions, LabVIEW 8.5 scales user applications based on the total available number of cores, the company said.

LabVIEW 8.5 also delivers symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) with the LabVIEW Real-Time environment where designers of embedded and industrial systems automatically can load balance tasks across multiple cores without sacrificing determinism. Users can also manually assign portions of code to specific processor cores to fine-tune real-time systems or isolate time-critical sections of code on a dedicated core.

Another feature of LabVIEW 8.5 is its wide array of I/O, measurement and display enhancements for building PAC-based industrial systems. These include a new library of OPC drivers that expands industrial connectivity for LabVIEW users, nearly doubling the number of compatible PLCs and industrial devices.

LabVIEW 8.5 also adds vibration and order tracking measurements and machine vision algorithms for industrial machine monitoring systems. For high-channel-count systems, the new multivariable editor makes it easy for users to quickly and easily configure or edit hundreds of I/O tags using a simple spreadsheet interface.