LabVIEW 8.5

Early this month, National Instruments launched its 13th annual NIWeek by introducing LabVIEW 8.5. This latest version of the company’s graphical programming environment includes advances in multicore and real-time programming. With multicore processors increasingly becoming the standard, there is a growing need for parallel programming languages that can take advantage of faster multiprocessor speeds. With its inherent multithreaded architecture, LabVIEW is claimed to fit the bill.

With the parallel dataflow language of LabView, users can easily map their applications to multicore and FPGA architectures for data streaming, control, analysis and signal processing. Building on the automatic multithreading capability of earlier versions, LabView 8.5 scales user applications based on the total available number of cores and delivers enhanced thread-safe drivers and libraries to improve throughput for RF, high-speed digital I/O and mixed-signal test applications.

LabView 8.5 also includes a new statechart module to help engineers and scientists design and simulate event-based systems using familiar, high-level statechart notations based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) standard. The new software also allows users to integrate existing PLC-based industrial systems, with more advanced programmable automation controllers (PACs), adding high-speed I/O and complex control logic to their industrial systems.

For more details visit http://www.ni.com/labview85/