National Instruments’ LabView 8.5 is the latest version of the platform which extends further into embedded and industrial applications with the new statechart design module for modeling and implementing system behavior and simplifies multicore and FPGA-based application development with its parallel dataflow language. LabView 8.5 runs on processors that can reportedly deliver faster test throughput, more efficient processor-intensive analysis, and more reliable real-time systems on dedicated processor cores. LabView’s new statechart module helps engineers and scientists design and simulate event-based systems using high-level statechart notations based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) standard, NI says. The module also allows users a single platform to design, prototype, and deploy their systems quickly, combining familiar statechart notation with real-world I/O running on deterministic real-time or field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based systems.

With the parallel dataflow language, users can map their applications to multicore and FPGA architectures for data streaming, control, analysis, and signal processing, NI says. LabView 8.5 scales user applications based on the total available number of cores and offers thread-safe drivers and libraries to improve throughput for RF, high-speed digital I/O, and mixed-signal test applications. www.ni.com National Instruments