Distributed intelligence more accessible

December 2005 Analytical Instrumentation & Environmental Monitoring Perimeter Security, Alarms & Intruder Detection

Driven by Moore's Law and the tremendous processing power now available in smaller, faster, and cheaper packages, engineers are finding ways to add processors to better meet their needs - in product designs, control systems, or test applications.

Adding more processors to a solution does not come for free, there is still the need to be able to program a multiple processor solution. Engineers and scientists are struggling to take advantage of this new processing power right now. Programming multiple processors, whether they are on the same board or distributed in different devices across a bus or network, introduces a host of new software development challenges. It is difficult to:

* Program different processors in a system - especially if they have different architectures (MPU versus DSP versus FPGA).

* Pass data among different processors, particularly realtime systems, without impacting performance.

* Pass data among processors when they are in systems that are spatially distributed on a network.

* See and navigate to all of the nodes on a distributed system.

* Synchronise operations within and among these remote devices and systems.

What distributed intelligence is

A distributed system uses multiple processors to complete an application. These systems can have the same or different architectures - microprocessors, FPGAs, DSPs, or any computing engine. Any system that combines multiple computing engines on a board, within boxes instruments, or among realtime systems. They all have these same challenges.

Distributed intelligence, delivered in National Instruments LabVIEW 8, is a collection of technologies and tools to meet these challenges for building distributed systems. This package makes it easily possible to meet these challenges. Specifically, distributed intelligence in LabVIEW 8 includes:

1. The ability to program all nodes of a distributed system - host and targets. What makes this more valuable is the fact that users can use LabVIEW to program many different types of targets: Desktop processors, realtime systems, FPGAs, PDAs, and embedded microprocessors and DSPs - all using the same LabVIEW graphical programming language approach.

2. A system view for navigating to all system nodes - the LabVIEW Project Explorer. Project Explorer may be used to view, edit, run, and debug the code running on any target, all from one window.

3. A simplified programming interface for sharing data - the shared variable. Using the shared variable, users easily can pass data among systems - even realtime systems, without impacting performance. No longer a need for communication loops and RT FIFOs. No longer any need to struggle with low-level TCP functions. Users simply configure shared variables through simple dialogues to pass data among systems or bind them to different sources. Data services, such as logging, alarming, and events may be added through dialogues.

4. The ability to synchronise within and among distributed devices and systems. Timing and synchronisation continue to be a key challenge for users defining high-performance measurement and control systems. With systems based on NI technology, users can 'get inside the device' and program the inner workings for more flexible solutions than traditional instrument or PLC approaches.

For more information contact National Instruments toll free on 0800 203 199 or e-mail [email protected]

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