Overview

LabVIEW FPGA takes real-time programming to the hardware level. Although LabVIEW RT is a deterministic real-time environment, it is still software running on a microprocessor, and any microprocessor has only a limited number of clock cycles available to share among all the running processes. LabVIEW RT's deterministic behavior means that you can accurately predict when your code will run; but as your application grows and you start running more processes, you have to begin making tradeoffs that affect determinism.

LabVIEW FPGA applications are not constrained by processor or operating system overhead. Code is written in parallel, is mapped directly into parallel hardware registers, and runs in parallel. With LabVIEW FPGA you can write massively parallel hardware-timed digital control applications with tight closed-loop rates in the tens of megahertz.

What Is an FPGA?

FPGA is the acronym for field-programmable gate array. The technology has been around for a while, but only recently have the costs come down and the tools improved enough that FPGAs have become commonplace. An FPGA is essentially a 2D array of logic gates with software programmable interconnections. FPGAs range in size from devices with tens of thousands of gates to devices with millions of gates and multiple embedded microprocessors. The number of gates is really just a marketing number. Each FPGA vendor combines those gates to create its own unique architecture. The basic programming block of the Xilinx parts used by National Instruments is defined as "slices." Each slice contains two storage elements, arithmetic logic gates,...