NI expands FPGA range
The new group of adapter modules includes four general-purpose digitisers, a module for high-speed digital I/O and what is claimed to be the industry’s fastest 16-bit analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) from Analog Devices, which is optimised for modulated communications.
All NI FlexRIO solutions require two distinct hardware components – an I/O-specific adapter module and a PXI-based NI FlexRIO FPGA module, which features a Xilinx Virtex-class field-programmable gate array (FPGA). With 15 different NI FlexRIO adapter modules now available, engineers and scientists can directly interface FPGAs to a broad variety of I/O for measurement applications requiring real-time performance, low-latency processing and reconfigurable behaviour.
The modules also integrate with the new NI FlexRIO Instrument Development Library, a collection of LabVIEW host and FPGA code, designed to provide capabilities commonly found in instruments such as acquisition engines, DRAM interfaces and trigger logic, along with the associated host APIs. Additionally, the new NI-573xR Example Instrument Driver builds on the code from the Instrument Development Library to create a default FPGA personality and familiar host API for using an NI 573x adapter module as a basic digitiser.
Together, these tools should decrease the time to first measurement. Both software components are available for download. Unlike other user-programmable FPGA hardware, NI FlexRIO FPGAs can be programmed with LabVIEW graphical system design software and the LabVIEW FPGA Module.
This approach helps domain experts to target their applications to FPGAs without requiring VHDL knowledge, while still providing an interface to import existing VHDL code directly into LabVIEW FPGA.
To learn more about the new NI FlexRIO adapter modules, visit www.ni.com/flexrio
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