Software is key to multicore system possibilities

ECN Asia spoke with Michael Schneider, Instrument Product Manager, National Instruments, on the current state of the T&M industry and the latest version of LabVIEW. Excerpts:



What are the recent technology trends and challenges in the test and measurement segment today and how will LabVIEW 8.5 address them?

Many test and measurement engineers face the tough challenge of trying to reduce the cost of test while testing more complex designs and products. For example, take today’s cellphone that continues to expand its capabilities to provide voice communication, text messaging, streaming video, multimedia gaming, and a wide variety of wireless connectivity standards including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM and more. The increase in design complexity is also evident in the automotive industry where automobiles are implementing intelligent telematics and safety systems.



The increased test complexity can quickly lead to an increase in test cost, but engineers are faced with decreasing budgets and a need to reduce test cost. These challenges are forcing test and measurement companies to develop test and measurement solutions that are flexible enough to meet the requirements of more complex designs and at the same time reduce the cost of test.



There are several technologies that will make this possible including more powerful processing solutions with multicore processors and FPGAs, and high-speed data buses such as PCI Express. However, software will be the most important technology that will enable engineers to build user-defined solutions based on these new technologies while dramatically reducing test system development complexity, which will lead to increased flexibility and reduced cost.

If we look at PC processors today, vendors have moved to new chip architectures with multiple processor cores on a single chip in order to increase processor performance. However, to take advantage of multicore processors, programmers must change how they develop test applications. In the words of Herb Sutter, Microsoft software architect, the ‘free lunch is over’ for developers who expect to see immediate software application performance gains when end-users simply upgrade their computers to ones with faster processors.



In other words, multicore processors provide increased processing performance at the cost of increased test system software programming complexity. However, National Instruments’ LabVIEW graphical programming language abstracts the complexity of multicore programming so engineers can take advantage of the increased performance and reduce their software development cost.



Is this what the new LabVIEW is for?

LabVIEW 8.5 introduces a number of key technologies to take advantage of multicore programming, including the ability to scale symmetric multiprocessing for deterministic real-time systems, direct processor assignment of key tasks for advanced performance tuning, and a suite of multicore debugging and monitoring tools that work throughout the environment. LabVIEW not only enables but also simplifies the task of programming multicore systems, allowing scientists and engineers to quickly take advantage of the latest PC technology. You can read more at http://www.ni.com/multicore.



Analysts say that in the T&M marketplace, ‘telecom is the key to growth.’ Do you agree, considering that not a single sector make up more than 10 percent of your revenue?

The telecom and communications industry is an exciting area for growth. The spread of wireless communications is impacting nearly every industry from cellular communications to household appliances to transportation. The challenges for engineers who are developing wireless communication into their designs is the rapid growth in the number of different wireless standards including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM, RFID, and WiMAX. Test engineers need solutions that can scale to meet the requirements of these evolving standards and are built on virtual instrumentation principals where the engineer can adapt the solution through software to meet the new requirements. A test strategy based on the concepts of virtual instrumentation provides the solution to meeting these challenges and reducing the cost of test over the entire product life cycle. While communications is an area of strong growth and innovation, there are several other industries that see exciting growth and investment including biotechnology, energy, and mechatronics.



How many more years of innovation are expected until we see the final version of LabVIEW when all features have been explored?

It will be a long time before LabVIEW explores all the features that are possible. LabVIEW continues to expand its capabilities in test, control, and design applications. As technology evolves, LabVIEW will progress to make it easier for engineers to take advantage of new technology advancements in their own applications. Our customers continue to expand LabVIEW into new application areas, so this programming language will continue to add capabilities and evolve to meet a new set of challenges.