Software

New version of software supports advanced PC technologies
LabWindows™/CVI 2009 increases developer productivity & application reliability

National Instruments has announced the release of LabWindows/CVI 2009, the latest version of the ANSI C development environment for building reliable test and measurement solutions. The software delivers support for new PC technologies including the C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA, which makes it possible for LabWindows/CVI host applications to communicate with field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based hardware, Microsoft Windows 7 and 64-bit operating systems for simplified development and deployment. Engineers and scientists can further increase reliability and productivity by using the software’s new Execution Profiler Toolkit to analyse and optimise run-time performance of application source code with a graphical representation of the time required to run every stage of the application. In addition, LabWindows/CVI 2009 increases productivity with a new attribute browser that facilitates quick design of custom user interfaces and debugging improvements.

LabWindows/CVI 2009 provides an environment to increase developer productivity for designing software-defined automated test systems and delivers reliable test and measurement solutions while ensuring backward compatibility for an ANSI C developer. The new Execution Profiler Toolkit includes a viewer that displays run-time function execution of LabWindows/CVI applications. The graphical representation of the function execution provides engineers and scientists with a visual profile, making it easy to identify inefficiencies and obstacles within applications.

LabWindows/CVI 2009 also offers complete support for the new Microsoft Windows 7 operating system to simplify migration from existing LabWindows/CVI applications. Engineers and scientists can now build 64-bit applications on a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system and run or install 64-bit applications on Windows 7. Using 64-bit operating systems improves application performance with larger memory capacity and the ability to load more data directly into memory.

The new C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA makes it possible for LabWindows/CVI developers to create host applications to communicate with reconfigurable hardware programmed by NI LabVIEW FPGA. The LabVIEW FPGA Module allows domain experts to define custom hardware personalities without having digital design or hardware description language expertise. Engineers and scientists can use this custom hardware to create applications that require high-speed hardware reliability and tight determinism. Also included in the new software is a new attribute browser that provides a way to quickly design custom user interfaces by simultaneously selecting and editing common attributes of multiple controls. LabWindows/CVI 2009 also features more informative debugging capabilities with Extended Debug Data which provide a more complete understanding of source code execution.

In addition, the LabWindows/CVI 2009 Real-Time Module includes improvements to help engineers and scientists design more reliable and deterministic applications. The LabWindows/CVI 2009 Real-Time Module provides the ability to design applications that direct User Datagram Protocol (UDP) network traffic to a self-selected group of subscribers and ensures data delivery with no additional work required by the sender.

Readers can learn more about the new features by watching the LabWindows/CVI webcast series located in the NI Developer Zone.