National Instruments extends embedded controller
By Warren Webb, Technical Editor -- EDN, April 17, 2007
National Instruments’ latest CompactRIO platform combines a Freescale processor and a Wind River real-time operating system with the built-in Xilinx FPGA to deliver the extra performance for a variety of embedded- and industrial-system applications, such as high-speed machine control, in-vehicle data logging, and embedded device prototyping. CompactRIO allows developers to define custom embedded hardware circuitry using plug-in I/O modules, a reconfigurable FPGA, and LabView graphical-development tools. The new cRIO-9014 controller combines a 400-MHz Freescale MPC5200 processor with an integrated floating-point unit, a hardware-based memory-management unit, 128 Mbytes of memory, and 2 Gbytes of nonvolatile storage. The VxWorks operating system running on the MPC5200 processor provides the controller with dependable performance to reduce jitter and increase reliability for high-speed-control applications. The cRIO-9014 controller also features a fault-tolerant file system, making it compatible with critical embedded data-logging applications. The price for the the cRIO-9014 CompactRIO starts at $2699, and it is available now.
