Can anyone tell me if there is a performance benefit to updating a user-interface vi with control refnums as opposed to global variables?

[sal]

Hi,
Right now, my data acquisition vi and the user interface vi are linked via global variables. Would I get better performance (i.e. panel user interface panel updates) if I used control refnums instead? How do these compare as far as memory is concerned? Thanks for the help.

[Jared 323]

Globals are definetly slower when updating from them than say a local or a wire from a control (even if that control is in a sub-vi). But this is for large arrays of data (or large clusters). If you are reading single items like a string value or a numeric control, the difference should be imperceivable. There are other problems with globals though, such as race conditions to worry about.

Jared