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Release Notes
Version 8.6
Contents
Porting LabVIEW to a New Embedded Target ...................................... 2
System Requirements and Target Recommendations............................. 3
Host Computer Requirements.......................................................... 3
Target Recommendations ................................................................ 3
System Requirements for Example Targets..................................... 3
Installation............................................................................................... 5
Selecting an Appropriate Example Target .............................................. 5
Upgrading from Version 2.5 ................................................................... 7
Changes in the LabVIEW Development System............................. 7
Upgrading Target Support ............................................................... 7
Instrumented Debugging Diagnostic Filename Change .................. 8
What’s New............................................................................................. 8
New Unix UI and Unicon Example Targets .................................... 8
Implementing User Interface Support.............................................. 8
Fixed-Point Support ......................................................................... 9
New VI-Specific Code Generation Options .................................... 11
New Project-Level Code Generation Options ................................. 12
Updated Embedded Automatic Test Framework............................. 13
C Generator-Specific VI Analyzer Tests ......................................... 13
New VIs and Functions.................................................................... 13
Microprocessor SDK Documentation ..................................................... 14
Where to Go for Support......................................................................... 15
Porting LabVIEW to a New Embedded Target
Use the LabVIEW Microprocessor SDK to port LabVIEW to any 32-bit
microprocessor. By using a single development tool from concept to
finished product, you can ease the development process and increase end
quality while reducing time to market.
The porting process includes several steps; some steps are required and
some steps are optional depending on your target and the features you want
to implement and support.
Target Recommendations
National Instruments recommends that your target has the following:
• 32-bit processor architecture.
• 256 KB of application memory (in addition to the embedded operating
system memory requirements).
• An embedded operating system so you can take advantage of the
parallelism and multithreading in LabVIEW.
• A hardware floating-point unit or floating-point emulation library to
perform the math calculations in the LabVIEW Analysis Library,
which is floating-point. You can improve performance by performing
the math calculations in hardware instead of using software emulation.
Contact the respective vendors for more information about their hardware
and software products.
Installation
Complete the following steps to install the Microprocessor SDK.
1. Log on as an administrator or as a user with administrator privileges.
2. Install LabVIEW 8.6, if not already installed.
3. Install the Microprocessor SDK.
4. Activate the Microprocessor SDK.
You must activate the Microprocessor SDK to access the example
targets. You have the option of activating the Microprocessor SDK
at the end of installation. You also can use the NI License Manager,
available by selecting Start»All Programs»National Instruments»
NI License Manager, to activate National Instruments products.
Refer to the National Instruments License Manager Help, available by
selecting Help»Contents in the National Instruments License
Manager, for more information about activating NI products.
5. Restart the computer when the installer completes.
Tip If you have beta versions, previous versions, and/or multiple versions of the
Embedded Development Module and/or Microprocessor SDK and the activation is not
successful at the end of installation, use the NI License Manager to activate the software.
The Microprocessor SDK also includes a blank template target. This target
is not intended to be an implementation example, but the target can serve
as a good starting point when none of the example targets are appropriate.
National Instruments recommends you use the blank target when porting
LabVIEW to a new operating system.
Pre-Built Static
Instrumented On Chip Run-Time Memory Memory Elemental IDE
Target Name Debugging Debugging Library Model Mapping I/O Integration UI
Code No No No Yes No No No No
Generation
Only
Axiom No No No Yes No No No No
CMD565, eCos
ROM Image
Note LabVIEW does not recognize any targets outside of this directory.
What’s New
New Unix UI and Unicon Example Targets
The Microprocessor SDK includes two new example targets:
• Unix UI
• Unicon UCN2410-CWIFI
The example user interface support uses FLTK, which is an open source
C++ graphical user interface toolkit. You must develop your own video
driver if you want to port user interface support and use something other
than FLTK.
Fixed-Point Support
The fixed-point data type has limited support.
Comparison Functions
The following Comparison functions support the fixed-point data type:
• Equal?
• Equal To 0?
• Greater Or Equal?
• Greater Or Equal To 0?
• Greater?
• Greater Than 0?
• Less Or Equal?
• Less Or Equal To 0?
• Less?
• Less Than 0?
• Not Equal?
• Not Equal To 0?
Conversion Functions
The following Conversion functions support the fixed-point data type:
• Boolean Array To Number
• Number To Boolean Array
• To Byte Integer
• To Double Precision Float
• To Extended Precision Float
• To Fixed-Point
• To Long Integer
• To Quad Integer
• To Single Precision Float
For your target to support VI-specific code generation options, you must
call LEP_Utilities_GetProjectVISettings.vi, located in the
labview\vi.lib\Platform\EmbProject\utilities directory,
from LEP_x_CGen.vi, which is located in your target directory.
LEP_Utilities_GetProjectVISettings.vi builds a list of all VIs
and related code generation settings in a project, which becomes an
attribute to the variant that determines how the LabVIEW C Code
Generator generates the C code from the block diagram.
To set code generation options for a VI, select File»VI Properties from the
front panel window or block diagram window to open the VI Properties
dialog box. Select C Code Generation Options from the Category
pull-down menu. You can select From project, True, or False.
Select True to enable the option and False to disable it. The default is
From project, so you only need to set the options in VI Properties if you
want to override the code generation settings in the project.
Note You have access only to the C Generator-specific tests unless you install and activate
the LabVIEW VI Analyzer Toolkit.
© 2005-2008 National Instruments Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in Ireland. 324064D-01 Jun08