National Instruments (NI) has targeted the design of embedded
systems based on multi-core processors with its latest design and
analysis software tool.
Embedded hardware, such as FPGAs, which takes advantage of the
performance gains of multi-core processors, is an area of growing
importance for developers.
The firm's approach is to take the inherent parallelism of its
LabVIEW software and directly
map applications to multi-core and FPGA architectures for data
streaming, control, analysis and signal processing.
"As multi-core processors become standard, there is an increased
need for parallel programming languages that can take advantage of
ever-quickening multiprocessor speeds," said Dr James Truchard,
National Instruments' president and CEO at the firm's developer
conference in the US.
Octal-core processor machine
For example, said Truchard, researchers at the
Max-Planck-Institut für
Plasmaphysik used the software to obtain a x20 processing speed
increase on an octal-core processor machine over a single
processor.
"The world is parallel. We always do things at the same time,
like walking and chewing gum. So why do we constrain ourselves to
sequential thinking when we write computer programs?" said Jeff
Kodosky, NI technology fellow and co-founder.
LabVIEW already takes advantage of multi-threaded parallel
processing on Windows-based hosts. With version 8.5 there is for
the first time real-time symmetric multiprocessing for embedded
systems.
It works by scaling applications based on the total available
number of cores and delivers enhanced thread-safe drivers and
libraries.
See also: Electronics Weekly's
focus on
LabVIEW for a roundup of content related to National
Instruments' design and analysis software tool.