NI adds FlexRIO FPGA modules for PXI Express

According to NI (Austin, Texas), these new products deliver optimized solutions for high-speed signal processing and other automated test and measurement applications. They also represent the industry's first commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution with the flexibility of NI LabVIEW FPGA technology and high-speed, reconfigurable I/O (RIO) for PXI and PXI Express systems, according to the firm.

FlexRIO solutions for PXI Express use two distinct hardware components: an FPGA module and an adapter module, NI said. The NI PXIe-796xR NI FlexRIO FPGA modules feature DSP-focused Xilinx Virtex-5 SXT FPGAs, which feature optimized DSP blocks to streamline operations, the company said. Engineers can program FlexRIO FPGAs with LabVIEW graphical system design software and the LabVIEW FPGA module, the company said, helping engineers target their applications to the FPGAs without prior VHDL knowledge.

The PXIe-796xR FPGA modules incorporate the NI-STC3 ASIC, which facilitates peer-to-peer streaming to significantly increase test and measurement system throughput, according to NI. The ASIC powers direct data streaming between multiple NI FlexRIO FPGA modules or between PXI Express digitizers and FPGA modules without sending data through the host processor, the company said.

This technology enables engineers to add FPGA capabilities to NI digitizers, according to the company. For computationally demanding applications, engineers also can spread their algorithms across multiple FPGAs, implementing peer-to-peer streaming from one to another at more than 800 MB/s, or in both directions at over 700 MB/s per direction, for a total module throughput of more than 1.4 GB/s, according to NI.

Using the other hardware component of an NI FlexRIO system— the NI FlexRIO adapter module—engineers can directly interface FPGAs to numerous types of I/O for measurements across test and measurement applications that require real-time performance or hardware signal processing, NI said.

The new NI 5781 baseband transceiver adapter module incorporates dual 100 MS/s 14-bit analog inputs and dual 100 MS/s 16-bit analog outputs and is ideal for custom baseband interfaces and ultra-high-speed control applications, according to the company.

More information about the new NI FlexRIO products for PXI Express is available on NI's website.