Learn The Basics: LabVIEW Embedded Deployment Platforms

R Series devices have integrated analog and digital I/O and PCI bus connectivity to an FPGA chip that is programmable with the LabVIEW FPGA module.  These flexible devices are used in a variety of applications, including custom discrete and analog control, sensor simulation, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test, digital protocol emulation, bit error rate testing, and other applications that require precise timing and control.

Every R Series board includes 3 DMA (direct memory access) channels that can stream data across the PCI bus at over 100MB/sec.  The PXI platform is also available for multiple board systems that require modularity and additional lines for synchronization.

Blackfin processors use a 32-bit RISC MCU programming model on a SIMD architecture, which was co-developed by Intel and Analog Devices, as MSA (Micro Signal Architecture).  The Blackfin architectures combine ADI's older SHARC architecture and Intel's Xscale architecture and puts them into a single core, combining Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and micro-controller functionality. This combination provides improvements in performance, programmability and power consumption over traditional DSP or RISC architecture designs.  The LabVIEW Embedded Module for ADI Blackfin processors provides and out-of-the-box programming experience for many of the Blackfin Processors. 

The following is a list of supported Blackfin EZ-Kit Development platforms:

The ARM architecture (originally the Advanced RISC Machine) is a 32-bit RISC processor architecture that is widely used in a number of embedded designs. Due to their power saving features, ARM CPUs are dominant in the mobile electronics market, where low power consumption is a critical design goal. ARM (the company) does not manufacture silicon; rather, they license the design to a number of silicon vendors including Intel, Freescale, Atmel, Analog Devices, Luminary, and NXP.  The LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK provides an example target for an ARM7 platform made by the single board computer vendor Phytec.  This example target also requires the eCos operating system (free download).

PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well.  The PowerPC is used in the NI CompactRIO platform, providing real-time processing power coupled with a Xilinx FPGA.  In addition, The LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK provides an example target for the CMD565EVB, a PowerPC platform from Freescale and distributed by a single board computer vendor called Axiom.  This target requires either the eCos embedded operating system (free download) or VxWorks (from Windriver).

The Freescale ColdFire is a 68k architecture microprocessor manufactured for embedded systems development by Freescale Semiconductor (formerly the semiconductor sector of Motorola).  This processor is used typically applications in the industrial space.  The LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK provides an example target for the Freescale Zoom™ ColdFire SDK from Logic Product Development.  This target requires the uClinux embedded operating system.

Texas Instruments TMS320 is a blanket name for a series of digital signal processors from Texas Instruments. People working with DSPs often abbreviate a processor as "C6x" when the actual name is something like TMS320C6713, since all products obviously have the name "TMS320" and all processors with "C6" in the name are code compatible and share the same basic features. The LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK provides an example target for the C6713 made by Spectrum Digital.  This kit contains everything that you need to get started with this target.

The LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK also provides two console targets (software only) which are very useful when evaluating the software.  The two examples are UNIX console which uses gcc and Cygwin (a free UNIX emulation environment) and Windows Console (uses VisualStudio C compiler).