Multi-core the focus in latest LabVIEW

As processor manufacturers look to parallel multi-core architectures for performance improvements, National Instruments says its new LabVIEW 8.5 graphical system design platform running on these new processors can deliver faster test throughput, more efficient processorintensive analysis and more reliable realtime systems on dedicated processor cores.

“This is a very significant launch for NI,” Chandran Nair, Managing Director, ASEAN, told CE Asia at the product launch press conference. “It will enable users to maximize application performance by taking advantage of the latest advances in processor hardware.”

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

To meet the more challenging debugging and code optimization requirements of real-time multi-core development, the new NI Real-Time Execution Trace Toolkit 2.0 visually displays timing relationships between sections of code and the individual threads and processing cores where the code is executing.

Nair also detailed how LabVIEW 8.5 extends the LabVIEW platform further into embedded and industrial applications with 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.