Development platform for test and control receives upgrade

National Instruments Corp. in Austin, Texas, is releasing LabVIEW 8, an upgrade to the company’s graphical development platform for design, control, and test, by introducing distributed intelligence-a suite of capabilities for engineers and scientists to design, distribute, and synchronize intelligent devices and systems. LabVIEW 8 also features a project-based environment for developing and managing large-scale applications. The release also updates the LabVIEW Real-Time Module, LabVIEW FPGA Module, LabVIEW PDA Module and LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module. LabVIEW 8 extends graphical programming further into test and control systems, from rack-and-stack test solutions to automation plant networks, with new flexible and easy-to-use distributed communication and control tools by simplifying its interface for communicating with and synchronizing between remote intelligent devices and systems, such as real-time processors and FPGAs. Embedded designers, test engineers and control-system engineers can use the same graphical platform for simple data transfer, deterministic real-time communication, and network synchronization with integrated alarms, events and data logging. For more information contact National Instruments online at www.ni.com.