Interface Gives C Developers the Ability to Easily Use FPGA Technology with Embedded Control and Acquisition Applications

AUSTIN, Texas, March 31, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) today announced a new programming interface available from the NI Labs virtual research lab that makes it easier for C/C++ developers to take advantage of the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module and NI FPGA-based hardware for embedded control and acquisition applications. With the new NI C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA, developers can use LabVIEW graphical tools to program the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) within NI hardware and choose either LabVIEW or C/C++ tools to program the processor within the system. This new LabVIEW FPGA feature helps engineers and scientists with C expertise implement FPGAs within their designs without the burden of learning hardware design and gives them the option to reuse their existing embedded C code.

The new C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA takes advantage of a reconfigurable I/O (RIO) driver for communication between the processor and FPGA in NI FPGA-based hardware such as NI CompactRIO and NI Single-Board RIO. The NI-RIO driver abstracts the communication between the processor and FPGA so that developers can avoid register-level programming. With the new C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA, engineers and scientists can program the real-time processor on NI FPGA-based hardware using C tools such as NI LabWindows(TM)/CVI, Microsoft Visual Studio or Wind River Workbench and interface to the LabVIEW FPGA code running on the FPGA. Developers also can program the processor using the LabVIEW Real-Time Module, which includes tools for low-level system debugging and precision execution timing for increased flexibility and functionality of deterministic real-time applications.

Additionally, the new C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA makes it possible for developers to use C/C++ to program the real-time processor of a PXI system or a processor on a PC running Microsoft Windows and interface to the LabVIEW FPGA code running on an NI FlexRIO or a PXI/Compact PCI/PCI NI R Series FPGA I/O device. The NI-RIO driver provides single-point transfer and DMA streaming functionality as well as interrupt-based communication between the processor and embedded FPGA within NI hardware.

The LabVIEW FPGA Module simplifies FPGA programming by offering an intuitive development environment that abstracts the VHDL code required and opens up FPGA programming to all engineers regardless of their hardware design experience. The graphical dataflow approach in the LabVIEW FPGA Module also makes it ideal for depicting the inherent parallelism of FPGAs. Additionally, developers can accelerate their application development with more than 200 pre-built FPGA intellectual property (IP) blocks available in the LabVIEW FPGA Module, select LabVIEW toolkits and ni.com. Engineers can visit LabVIEW FPGA IPNet at www.ni.com/ipnet to learn about and download FPGA IP blocks created by NI developers and LabVIEW users for applications such as signal processing, RF and communications and fixed-point math.

Developers interested in programming the real-time processor in NI FPGA-based hardware using C can download the C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA from NI Labs for free at www.ni.com/labs. Developers interested in evaluating the LabVIEW development platform and NI FPGA-based hardware can visit www.ni.com/embeddedeval to purchase the NI Embedded Software Evaluation Kit, which includes evaluation versions of LabVIEW and the LabVIEW FPGA and LabVIEW Real-Time modules. The evaluation kit also includes an NI Single-Board RIO embedded device and step-by-step tutorials for building FPGA-based applications.

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past 10 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, e-mailing nati@ni.com or visiting www.ni.com/nati.

CompactRIO, CVI, LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, ni.com and NI FlexRIO are trademarks of National Instruments. The mark LabWindows is used under a license from Microsoft Corporation. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

    Editor Contact:         Hilary Marchbanks, (512) 683-5937
    Reader Contact:         Ernest Martinez, (800) 258-7022

SOURCE National Instruments