|
 |
programmablelogicZONE Products for the week of January 12, 2009
National Instruments Says…
Instrument-Class I/O Added To LabVIEW FPGA Hardware
NI FlexRIO Product Family Increases FPGA-Based I/O Performance for PXI Test Systems
National Instruments introduced a new family of open, FPGA-based hardware for the PXI platform. The NI FlexRIO product family is the industry’s first commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution to provide engineers with the flexibility of NI LabVIEW FPGA technology combined with high-speed, instrument-class I/O. With NI FlexRIO, engineers can add custom signal processing algorithms to their PXI-based field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware. Then, with interchangeable adapter modules, they can directly interface the FPGA to instrument-class I/O or create their own custom front-end hardware to meet their specific application requirements. With these capabilities, engineers can employ techniques such as in-line processing, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation and protocol-aware test required during the design and testing of many complex electronic devices.
“LabVIEW FPGA technology will continue to transform instrumentation and extend graphical system design by providing software programmability at the hardware level,” said Dr. James Truchard, president, CEO and cofounder of National Instruments. “NI FlexRIO gives engineers a way to solve applications that were previously impossible with COTS hardware.”
NI FlexRIO FPGA modules feature high-performance Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs that engineers can program using the LabVIEW FPGA Module. Previously, FPGA technology was limited to a subset of hardware engineers with extensive knowledge in digital design, but LabVIEW FPGA makes this technology available to all engineers through intuitive graphical programming. Using LabVIEW FPGA, engineers gain direct access to raw digital pins on the NI FlexRIO FPGA modules, with 66 differential lines at up to 1 Gb/s per pair or 132 single-ended lines at up to 400 Mb/s. In addition, NI FlexRIO FPGA modules offer deep onboard memory and the ability to use external clocks.
All NI FlexRIO implementations require two distinct hardware pieces – a PXI FPGA module and an adapter module, which defines the specific I/O capabilities of the system. The first NI FlexRIO adapter module is the NI 6581 high-speed digital I/O adapter, which is ideal for algorithmic pattern generation and protocol-aware tests. The NI 6581 delivers 100 MHz of digital I/O (200 Mb/s DDR) through 54 single-ended channels with selectable voltage levels including 1.8 V, 2.5 V and 3.3 V (5 V compatible). National Instruments also has worked with Averna to create a plug-and-play IEEE 1394b adapter module, and expects many additional modules to be available from third parties in the future.
Additionally, NI FlexRIO offers engineers the flexibility to design their own custom adapter modules with the exact converters, buffers, clocks and connectors to meet their application needs. To help engineers develop their own module configurations, the NI FlexRIO Adapter Module Development Kit (MDK) features full documentation on electrical and mechanical design details, including CAD files and PCB outlines as well as various adapter module metal enclosures.
EN-Genius Says…
National’s recent announcement of this FPGA-based PXI development platform is one of the more creative uses of FPGAs I’ve seen in a while. It’s also an excellent example of how FPGAs can be used to accelerate prototyping, simplify the development of sophisticated signal processing systems, or enable quick, cost-effective hardware-in-the-loop testing. In good part this was made possible by using their versatile LabView visual programming language to simplify the task of programming FPGAs enough that engineers are freed from having to develop an intimate knowledge of the devices. While this product announcement is focused on PXI test systems, the technology that underlies it will find applications in everything from automotive control systems to embedded signal processing.
If you’re not familiar with it, LabView FPGA is a dedicated application of NI’s programming language which has the same graphical paradigm and data flow model as the original but uses a different compiler to generate VHDL FPGA code which is passed to a Xilinx complier. The graphic interface enables users to easily architect how their algorithms are executed within the FPGA, using either task parallelism, data parallelism or a combination of both with as many pipeline stages as the FPGA logic capacity will allow. Anyone who’s tried to write software for parallel execution will be especially appreciative of how the ability to graphically represent the relationships between multiple simultaneous processes can simplify the task. The package also includes an extensive library of ready-to-run IP blocks, including filters, PID controllers, communication protocols, that can be quickly plugged into your design.
The resulting code can be run on any of NI’s target boards which contain a Xilinx FPGA and, in some cases, a separate control processor. While their early target boards were based on the high-end Virtex FPGAs, they also offer some development boards that use Xilinx’s low-cost Spartan III device and a PowerPC chip. A straightforward PCI interface is used to link the processor to the FPGA, which can be configured to handle acceleration/co-processing, I/O expansion, custom timing, inline DSP pre-processing tasks, or implement custom interfaces and buffers for analog interfaces.
About the only downside to this package is that it’s a closed system that does not make the VHDL it generates available to third-party hardware or software so that you must always use NI’s target boards which range between a bit under $1 k to around $2 k (depending on configuration and I/O). While this is perfectly acceptable for the prototyping and development tasks or low-volume production runs that it was originally intended for, it does add some difficulty to translating your work into a high-volume commercial design. About the only alternative currently available is a downloadable software patch that allows the NI software to recognize the Digilent starter kit as a valid target system. Built around a Xilinx Spartan 3e device, the Digilent board costs around $149 and connects to nearly any PC host system via a USB interface. Unfortunately, it’s only approved for academic and evaluation purposes at this time and cannot be deployed commercially.
While NI has no immediate plans to open up its walled garden for widespread use, they did not rule out the possibility of offering more general-purpose tools for developing code for raw FPGAs in the future. In the meanwhile, their support for the cost-effective Spartan series is a move in the right direction.
Product Page FlexRIO
Product Page SRIO
|
|
|
|
|
