NEWS RELEASE – Aug. 8, 2006 – National Instruments, a global leader in virtual instrumentation, today announced LabVIEW 8.20, the 20th anniversary edition of the LabVIEW graphical system design platform for test, control and embedded system development. Building on its long history of interconnectivity with third-party hardware and software, LabVIEW 8.20 extends the LabVIEW graphical dataflow language with native support for text-based math with MathScript. LabVIEW 8.20 also brings significant improvements in control design and simulation performance and accelerates development of real-time system prototypes using standard PCs, FPGAs or custom designs.
Open and Integrated Design Platform
As system complexity grows, designers are forced to integrate more and more functionality into their products, often requiring design and simulation tools from different domains to work together. Using MathScript, engineers can integrate their existing m-files created using the MATLAB software, or create new scripts with LabVIEW and mix and match graphical and text-based approaches to meet their design application needs and quickly prototype systems. By combining the interactive front panel GUIs and connectivity to real-world I/O from LabVIEW with algorithms designed in traditional text-based math languages, such as m-files, engineers can more quickly explore, prototype, iterate and complete their designs.
In addition to general compatibility with MATLAB language syntax, LabVIEW 8.20 helps engineers incorporate algorithms from other leading mathematics packages, including Maplesoft Maple, Mathsoft Mathcad and Scilab. For FPGA-based development, engineers can use new machine monitoring IP libraries and add third-party IP through the VHDL node in the LabVIEW FPGA Module. Third-party IP cores available for LabVIEW FPGA have been validated by Xilinx, Celoxica and Impulse C.
“Over the past 20 years, LabVIEW has revolutionized the way engineers and scientists work through a graphical system design and test approach,” said Dr. James Truchard, NI president, CEO and cofounder. “LabVIEW 8.20 combines an open design platform that embraces multiple tools and design approaches with powerful, custom measurement capabilities to streamline product development through an integrated design, prototyping and deployment platform.”
Control System Design and Simulation Performance Improvements
LabVIEW 8.20 improves algorithm execution speeds for both simple PID and advanced control systems. The PID Toolkit has improved performance by up to 14 times and execution speed of the LabVIEW Simulation Module is improved up to nine times. This makes it possible for engineers to develop and execute high-performance applications from simple PID to complex control systems using the same graphical system design approach.
With LabVIEW 8.20, engineers can integrate control algorithms and plant models developed using third-party platforms directly into the LabVIEW design and prototyping platform. With the Simulation Interface Toolkit, engineers can use simulation models developed in The MathWorks, Inc. Simulink® software environment in LabVIEW for real-time control prototyping and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing. Additionally, with the new External Model Interface in LabVIEW 8.20, engineers can integrate values from third-party plant models in the LabVIEW Simulation Module. The LabVIEW 8.20 Simulation Module works with third-party models from Dynasim and Plexim GmbH.
Rapid Design Prototyping and Deployment
LabVIEW 8.20 streamlines the prototyping and deployment of real-time embedded designs on NI CompactRIO or PXI hardware platforms, as well as standard desktop computers, FPGAs or custom board designs – all using the same graphical programming approach. The new LabVIEW FPGA Wizard automatically generates I/O code and timing structures for quickly designing prototype systems directly in FPGA hardware for custom, real-time I/O systems, which include NI PXI, CompactRIO and standard desktop computers. Engineers can implement these FPGA-based targets on plug-in boards in a standard desktop PC for fast, low-cost system prototyping. And, with the LabVIEW 8.20 Embedded Development Module, engineers can run their LabVIEW algorithms on 32-bit microprocessor-based custom designs.
New embedded targets supported in the LabVIEW 8.20 Embedded Module include TI 6713 and Philips ARM7 229x processors, as well as QNX and MonteVista Linux® embedded OSs.
About LabVIEW for Graphical System Design
The NI embedded design and prototyping platform combines the LabVIEW graphical development environment with off-the-shelf, FPGA-based measurement and control hardware for design, simulation, rapid prototyping, implementation, validation and verification of embedded systems. With the intuitive LabVIEW graphical dataflow programming environment, engineers and scientists can rapidly develop and iterate on designs, reducing the time from concept to prototype. Using LabVIEW with tightly integrated FPGA-based NI PXI or CompactRIO hardware further reduces time to market by eliminating the need for costly integration steps such as board bring-up. After prototyping and validating the design, domain experts can deploy these custom designs to an extensive range of off-the-shelf NI hardware or deploy to custom hardware using components such as DSPs or custom ASICs.
About National Instruments
For 30 years, National Instruments (www.ni.com) has been a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging PCs and commercial technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for test, control and design applications through easy-to-integrate software, such as NI LabVIEW, and modular measurement and control hardware for PXI, PCI, PCI Express, USB and Ethernet. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 4,000 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past seven years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.
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