NI tackles embedded, multicore challenges

BANGALORE, INDIA: National Instruments announced the LabVIEW 8.6 some time ago, said to be 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.

Jayaram Pillai, MD, India, Russia & Arabia, NI, said: "We have always talked about virtual instrumentation. How can you bring the local content into the system?" NI's LabView's ability has generally been to create a program out of a non-program. "Images are your natural language. We feel engineers can express themselves using graphical language," he adds.

Parallel programming
Most embedded systems provide quick and easy solutions. About 98 percent of the processing environments are used elsewhere, other than the PCs. What embedded can do today is tremendous! NI's LabView is inherently meant for parallel programming.

Pillai said: "When running two cores, it is important how you share data between the cores. We have multi-core for Windows. We can do multi-core programming for embedded as well."

Solving embedded problems
Embedded systems have two requisite steps, that is, programming the electronics and programming the system. "We see ourselves getting into the space of solving multi-core problems," added Pillai. "Everything today is software enabled. We intend doing for T and M what spreadsheet has done for financial analysis."

"To solve 98 percent problems of the embedded applications, there is a need to make the development of embedded systems even simpler," he noted.

"As we went higher in abstraction, we found that we were able to solve more problems. You have got to get into a high level of abstraction, which can be done by LabView, called system design platform. LabView today, is the platform for test and embedded," said Pillai.

In grahical system design, there is a need to leverage and collaborate in parallel. Graphical programming harnesses multi-core processors. LabView has also been the runaway software tool for DAQ and instrument control. Hence, more and more people can now do embedded programming.

Pillai said: "If you want to build systems, you need to integrate NI design tools with third-party design tools to share the data. The integration of data has to be seamless."

Graphical system design benefits
The concepts of graphical system design include design, prototype and deploy. So, what are the product lifecycle benefits?

Multiple hardware systems are priced at different cost points based on performance. A LabView user can install the software into an expensive system for testing purposes, and later, deploy on to a lower platform.

Sharing of data between cores is key! Parallel programming in sequential does not make sense. Rather, data flow programming makes a lot of sense. However, there is a legacy problem as far as multi-core programming is concerned. That is: how do you shift so much of the sequential programming knowledge into data flow? This will require a major paradigm shift.

Besides, there are a lot of sequential tools as well. There is a need to integrate all of that into multi-core. So far, multi-core problems have been addressed in test and embedded systems. Problems associated with gaming are currently being tackled.

NI projects double digit growth in 2009 for the region comprising India, Arabia and Russia.