NI LabVIEW 8.5 Wins Best of Show at 2007 Embedded Systems Conference


Venture Development Corporation Recognizes LabVIEW 8.5 for Streamlining Embedded Developer Output

Oct. 30, 2007 - National Instruments today announced that LabVIEW 8.5, the latest version of the graphical system design platform for test, control and embedded system development, was named by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) as the Best in Show winner at the 2007 Embedded Systems Conference. VDC, a Massachusetts-based technology market research and strategy firm, recognized LabVIEW 8.5 for empowering embedded developers to rapidly build, optimize and debug designs based on increasingly challenging and complex multicore hardware.

Introduced in August, LabVIEW 8.5 extends the LabVIEW embedded platform to program multicore, real-time processors. Engineers can combine LabVIEW 8.5 software with commercial multicore hardware to achieve significant performance gains. Additionally, LabVIEW 8.5 introduces the LabVIEW Statechart Module to help engineers run higher-level designs on targets including field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), real-time systems, PDAs, touch panels and a variety of microprocessors.

"We believe that the flexible set of system development solutions found in LabVIEW 8.5, which also include LabVIEW Real-Time and a new trace toolkit, will continue to draw interest from embedded development teams," said Matt Volckmann, senior analyst/program manager at VDC. "The number of new additions in this version greatly expands development capabilities in the embedded workplace."

With the LabVIEW Statechart Module, which is based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) standard, developers can design applications at a higher level of abstraction than previously possible. Statecharts are commonly used to design state machines that model the behavior of real-time and embedded systems to depict event occurrences and responses for creating digital communication protocols, machine controllers and system-protection applications. Embedded developers can use the LabVIEW Statechart Module to design software combined with real-world I/O running on deterministic real-time or FPGA-based hardware with familiar, high-level statechart notations. Developers can shorten their time to market by combining high-level design tools, including statecharts and simulation diagrams, with the low-level multicore support that a single platform provides.

Since its release, LabVIEW 8.5 has empowered embedded developers throughout many industries. For example, the Advanced Concepts Group at NASA Ames Research Center developed its next-generation Wind Tunnel Safety-of-Flight system based on LabVIEW 8.5 Real-Time and the dual-core NI PXI-8106 RT embedded controller. Application benchmarks show the processor workload was reduced from 43 percent CPU load to 30 percent load on one CPU of the PXI-8106 RT, leaving an entire core available for processing non-critical tasks.

Additional LabVIEW 8.5 features include:
o New FPGA IP including multichannel PID, notch filter and signal generators
o OEM evaluation bundle with QNX Neutrino real-time operating system and NI USB data acquisition hardware
o Project file management tools and graphical code merging for team-based development
o Low-level memory management tools for performance optimization
o New optimized BLAS linear algebra libraries
o Improved edge detection for image processing and optimized algorithms for various demodulators and channel coding schemes
o Control design and simulation enhancements including Model Predictive Control (MPC) and analytical PID controller design
o Improved support of .m file scripts

To explore resources involving multicore technology or to fully take advantage of processing capabilities in test, control and embedded design applications, readers can visit http://www.ni.com/multicore.

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 4,500 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past eight years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

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