LabVIEW™: A graphical system design environment for adaptive hardware/software systems

Modern embedded real-time systems are required to adapt reliably and deterministically to a changing environment due to external or internal conditions. Reconfigurable platforms are shown to be an effective architecture for implementing efficient adaptive systems. The National Instruments Reconfigurable I/O (RIO) hardware platform (Fig. 1) combines a networked realtime application processor with re-configurable FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) for co-processing, low-level timing and I/O control, as well as configurable front-end I/O modules that interface directly to the external environment [1]. This hardware is complemented by a unified run-time system (Fig. 2) generated by the LabVIEW™ graphical development environment [2] that provides a visual formalism with rigorous syntax, semantics, analysis, and code-generation capabilities for system level design (Fig. 3). RIO subsystems can be connected in a distributed network to provide adaptability at a larger system scope.