工业控制者随FPGA的发展

National Instrument’s view of software-designed systems incorporating a real-time processor, an FPGA and reconfigurable I/O is used to create its newest CompactRIO controller.

大卫·格林菲尔德（David Greenfield）内容，自动化世界总监

Aug 6th, 2013

国家仪器的Compactrio-9068

Over the past few years, I’ve devoted a fair amount of attention to the impact embedded systems are having on industrial automation (see a list of several articles on this topic at end of this item). Most of that coverage has been spent explaining how embedded computing technologies, such as FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), will change manufacturing controller applications due to the ability of FPGAs to be re-programmed in the field.

Until today, my exposure to such technologies revolved around controllers designed for specific applications. Now, with the release of National Instruments’Compactrio-9068软件设计控制器，现在可以使用基于FPGA的重新编程控制器，可用于广泛适用性。根据国家仪器的说法，新的控制器可以解决“任何苛刻的嵌入控制和监视任务”，从构建“可以抑制货物飞机上的火灾的系统以及通过连锁风筝的飞行到精确堆叠20吨湿湿混凝土的系统。”

A key component of the cRIO-9068 controller is its use of the Xilinx Zynq-7020 All Programmable system on a chip (SoC), which combines a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and Xilinx 7 Series FPGA fabric. Using a 667 MHz dual-core ARM processor, the cRIO-9068 is reportedly four times faster than previous cRIO generations. The cRIO-9068 has an extended operating temperature range of -40 °C to 70 °C.

国家仪器表示，它在Linux上建造了CRIO-9068，以使控制器尽可能开放，并允许Linux社区开发第三方申请。根据National Instruments的说法，CRIO-9068基于Linux的实时操作系统可以由LabView实时和C/C ++应用程序开发人员使用。

LocalGrid Technologies的总裁兼首席执行官Bob Leigh已经在多伦多水电公司（Toronto Hydro）的应用中聘用了CRIO-9068，该公司在加拿大多伦多市向大约719,000名客户提供电力。Leigh在讨论他在CRIO-9074上使用现有LabView代码的新控制器的经验时说：“在接收CRIO-9068控制器的24小时内，我们在没有任何问题的情况下运行了现有的Labview应用程序软件。”

Backwards compatibility of the new cRIO system was a key consideration according to David Fuller, vice president of applications and embedded software at National Instruments. “Because so many customers have invested in CompactRIO, the R&D teams… [maintained] complete backward code compatibility,” he says.

利格（Leigh）在LocalGrid与多伦多水电公司（Toronto Hydro）的合作中说，他正在与“收集更多数据并采用算法来改善电力分配”的公用事业公司合作。我们可以一起使用Compactrio来彻底改变网格。”

随着CRIO-9068的发布，National Instruments还为NI Linux实时操作系统提供了Labview 2013的支持。LabView 2013包括从改进的代码管理到处理文档和调试，软件工程工具，移动和网络支持以及“改进的部署体验”的新功能，并通过合并新的部署工具Wirebird Labs。

Other embedded coverage fromAutomation World：