National Instruments Adds Instrument-Class I/O to LabVIEW FPGA

By DE Editors

National Instruments (Austin, TX) introduced a new family of open, FPGA-based hardware for the PXI platform: the NI FlexRIO is said to be 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.

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 1Gbps per pair or 132 single-ended lines at up to 400Mbps. In addition, NI FlexRIO FPGA (priced from $2,999) modules offer deep onboard memory and the ability to use external clocks.

All NI FlexRIO implementations require 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 — priced from $999, suited for algorithmic pattern generation and protocol-aware tests and delivers 100MHz of digital I/O (200Mbps DDR) through 54 single-ended channels with selectable voltage levels).

To help engineers develop their own module configurations, the NI FlexRIO Adapter Module Development Kit (MDK) — priced from $4,999) features full documentation on electrical and mechanical design details, including CAD files and PCB outlines as well as various adapter module metal enclosures.

For a four-minute video about NI FlexRIO,  contact National Instruments.

Sources:  Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.