NI-5640R Programming in C

[sandeep palreddy]

Hey folks,
                 I was able to develop a Labview project that is a part of a radar system. The Labview project uses the FPGA on the board and generates a bunch of singals and transmits them through the oupput port and collects the data through the input ports and does signal processing. All this is done in real time. My project works very good, but all the other software and hardware that is part of the radar system is in linux and is programmed in C. So, i was asked if I can program the FPGA on the NI-5640R card using C. I am not really that great at programming in C, so i was wondering if someone has tried doing something like this (like interfacing the NI-5640R card or similar cards in C or FPGA programming of this card in C). Any help regarding this will be very appreciated.

And my professor also wants to know whats the maximum stable "through put" (data transfer rate) of this card in windows (with all other windows real time processes running and other programs running). This card sits on the PCI slot, and my PCI bus is rated at something like 600MHz. I would appreciate any help.

Thanks,

Sandeep.

[Abhay_Samant]

Which of the following two questions are you asking:

1.) Is it possible to interface to the NI-5640R board via C function calls?  In other words, can you configure the ADC, DAC, clock and other configuration via C?

In this case, the answer is No.  NI-5640R can only be programmed via LabVIEW at this point.

2.) Is it possible to write your signal processing algorithms in C and then download them to FPGA on NI-5640R?

I have read that there are tools available in the market, that let you program your signal processing logic in a C-like language and then use compilers to synthesize gates.  I am not an expert, but if this is the case, then we can try to get some answers for you.

[sandeep palreddy]

Yes i want to do everything in C (nothing in Labview), because thats what i was aked to do by my professor.  I was asked to do the FPGA programming, configuring ADC, DAC, Clock etc... everything for my project in C and also the signal processing stuff in C as well.

If you guys know atleast a part of what i am looking for (say signal processing aspect in C) i would like to get that any help i can. It would be wonderful if someone can give me the url or (send me files ) that has signal processing algorithms written in C. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Sandeep.

[Xaqmx]

Sandeep-

Unfortunately, you won't find much support for interfacing with any NI FPGA products in C. You options are:

1) Write a DLL using LabVIEW FPGA and call that DLL from C. This will still require you to have and program in LabVIEW. Additionally, you will need the runtime engine on any other computer that you want to use the DLL on.

2) There is a registry level programming guide floating around for some of the R-series boards, but it has no reference to the IF-RIO, a significantly more complicated board, to my knowledge.

If you have to do your project with no interaction with LabVIEW, then start looking for other hardware. If you can get away with writting a wrapper DLL in LabVIEW to call from C, then I'd say its your best bet.

Xaq "The Bulldozer"