It was a little more than 20 years ago when we formed the first ideas of what is now known as LabVIEW. Our vision was to create something that would do for engineers and scientists what the spreadsheet did for financial analysts. What started as an idea in 1984 turned into the first LabVIEW release – LabVIEW 1.0 on the Apple Macintosh Plus in 1986. While a lot about LabVIEW has changed since 1986, its purpose and core concepts remain the same.
Today, the 20th anniversary edition of LabVIEW, LabVIEW 8.20, enables measurements in minutes using LabVIEW Express technologies, adds the ability to combine textual math with graphical programming, features object-oriented programming, and offers improvements for designing and targeting embedded devices. LabVIEW 8.20 does this by building on the principles that led to the first version in 1986 and to the success of LabVIEW over its 20-year history.
Figure 1: From LabVIEW 1 to LabVIEW 8.20
We attribute much of the LabVIEW development ease of use to two fundamental concepts - the front panel and block diagram, both present since LabVIEW 1.0. Creating a user interface by dragging and dropping controls and indicators and writing the code by wiring icons together are key elements of LabVIEW. The original LabVIEW block diagram has improved greatly by including additional models of programming. LabVIEW now has an event structure as well as custom timing structures, such as the timed loop and new diagram types, which include the simulation diagram. When we created LabVIEW 1.0, it was possible to control instruments over GPIB. With LabVIEW today, we have the power to run real-time applications, develop custom hardware using FPGAs, create communications and RF test systems, and design systems with embedded 32-bit processors. Throughout the development of LabVIEW, we have been committed to creating an open environment that provides connectivity to NI and third-party hardware and includes tools to reuse external software with LabVIEW- thus enabling maximum productivity gains for LabVIEW users.
As design cycles get compressed for shorter product time to market, silicon gate costs continue to decline as densities increase, and heterogeneous devices with multiple processors and FPGAs become more common resulting in designs with greater complexity and longer development cycles. For years, designers have hoped that approaching product design from a more software-oriented perspective would improve productivity. But any improvement so far has been modest at best, due mostly to increased computer performance. Traditional software development tools haven't improved productivity at anywhere near the pace that design complexity is increasing, let alone enough to shorten the design cycle.
The only way to achieve this type of productivity increase is through the use of graphical tools like LabVIEW. While graphical user interfaces have made computers more accessible and users more productive, the same benefits are available to designers using graphical design tools.
Figure 2: Graphical system design with LabVIEW and NI hardware enables rapid prototyping and design iteration to reduce the time from design to deployment.
Graphical dataflow programming lets engineers and domain experts rapidly develop and iterate designs, reducing the time from idea development to prototype to deployment. Graphical programming also is a highly interactive and responsive process that facilitates greater exploration, leading to a more optimized design.
Ideally, designers would work at a higher level of abstraction for the entire design. But it may be necessary to gain access to finer-grained details for the critical portions of the design that require the highest performance. Graphical programming is well suited to represent system components at different levels of abstraction.
Dataflow is a powerful model of computation. It's Turing-complete like any text-based language, but more flexible and inherently parallel. It's also a natural model for distributed systems. With the addition of a timed-loop structure, it can elegantly represent distributed multi-rate systems.
Graphical tools typically include a rich library of user interface components for displaying-data in many forms. Being able to probe and modify design parameters interactively through the user interface while the model runs is a very effective way to develop intuition about the design and explore alternatives quickly.
The unique combination of an interactive front-panel user interface and graphical structured dataflow diagrams has led to dramatic productivity gains. The continued refinement of graphical design tools, supported by computers with high-speed graphics engines, will be how design engineers achieve the high productivity levels required to reduce time-to-market with more complex designs in our highly competitive world.
And as we mark the 20th anniversary of LabVIEW with the release of LabVIEW 8.20, we are excited at the possibilities for LabVIEW, LabVIEW users, and graphical system design in continuing to make a difference and deliver higher quality designs and applications with lower development times.
