National Instruments has introduced LabVIEW 8.6, the latest version of the graphical system design software platform for control, test and embedded system development. Building on the inherent parallel nature of graphical programming, LabVIEW 8.6 delivers new tools to help engineers and scientists take advantage of the benefits of multicore processors, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and wireless communication.
To take advantage of these technologies, engineers currently are forced to work with multiple tools which are not designed for parallel programming. By using the latest version of LabVIEW, engineers now have a single platform to increase test and control system throughput with multicore processors, reduce the development time of high-performance FPGA-based advanced control and embedded prototyping applications and more easily create distributed measurement systems to acquire data remotely.
“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 co-founder 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 of LabVIEW 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.
LabVIEW 8.6 also 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 can also 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 can now better identify parallel sections of code using a new feature that reorganises LabVIEW diagrams.