The systems have an integrated hardware architecture that combines an embedded real-time processor and a reconfigurable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) within a single chassis, which according to the company, lowers the cost of CompactRIO for OEM applications. The cRIO-9072 and cRIO-9074 systems extend the family of the company’s FPGA-based deployment platforms, including PXI, PC, and standard CompactRIO hardware that share a standard embedded hardware architecture combining a floating-point processor, a reconfigurable FPGA, and I/O modules.
The company claims that by using this standard architecture and LabVIEW tools engineers can design and prototype industrial monitoring and control machines and embedded devices with flexible hardware and quickly deploy to the new cost-optimized cRIO-907x CompactRIO systems to reduce deployment costs. Since the same LabVIEW code can be reused during prototyping and deployment, the time to market for the product is reduced.
According to the company, to reduce the cost of CompactRIO for high-volume applications, its engineers designed the new cRIO-907x systems as integrated systems with the embedded real-time processor and FPGA chip on the same printed circuit board (PCB) rather than multiple PCBs as in traditional CompactRIO systems. The new cRIO-9072 integrated system combines an industrial 266 MHz real-time processor and an eight-slot chassis with an embedded and reconfigurable 1M gate FPGA chip. The new cRIO-9074 integrated system contains a 400 MHz real-time processor and an 8-slot chassis with an embedded and reconfigurable 2M gate FPGA chip.
The cRIO-9072 and cRIO-9074 systems are available at a list price of $1,999 and $2,999, respectively.
Earlier this month, National Instruments introduced a new suite of software and hardware intellectual property (IP) in collaboration with its customers, integrators, and alliance partners to simplify the FPGA development.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
