cRIO 9074 run FPGA compiler on windows 10 with Labview 2018

[rolfk]

I'm sorry but I won't be much help with this further. I did install LabVIEW with FPGA recently on my Windows 10 system here at work for updating of a project that uses a cRIO-9074. I used LabVIEW 2018 SP1 for that since that is pretty much the latest versions that still supports the VxWorks and Pharlap based cRIOs. But I'm in a comfortable situation since I can actually use the NI cloud compilation for the FPGA work and never really tried to use the local compiler.

I just started a compile of that project for fun and it starts with the local compile server, although it doesn't seem to progress beyond the stage of the first step in the compile server where it says Configuration: Generating Xilinx IP. I tried once in a grey past to install it on a Linux machine because it was supposed to be faster there than under Windows but gave up since the Linux installations I had were not compatible with what the Xilinx compiler needed and I lost patience and did not feel like installing yet another Linux machine.

EDIT: It eventually did move forward, but my God is it slow! My machine is not a hardware monster but it is also not an old and clunky laptop. I would expect a little more out of a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-1365U with 32 GB of memory! Currently still busy at synthesizing the logic, after "only" 53 minutes. Likely going to last another hour or so! In the cloud I get the same project built in about 10 minutes.

[~Its_Me~]

Hey Rolfk,

thank you so much for the help! It is not clear to me what you are using to compile, besides the cloud server, could you please explain? is it a Virtualbox setup or a real server?  In Virtualbox I ran into some problems one of these was it was extremely slow (at installing the FPGA compiler software), this was because I only gave the VM 4 gig of RAM and it started to use the ssd to cache, when I made the RAM size of the VM 16 gig it was much faster.

I wish I could use the cloud service this takes up too much time...

[rolfk]

I simply installed LabVIEW 2018 SP1 32-bit, Realtime 2018 SP1 and FPGA 2018 under Windows 10. Works but extremely slow despite decent hardware specs. The FPGA Toolkit contains the ISE 14.7 compiler needed for the cRIO 907x targets. But am not going to use that for real as long as I have the cloud compile service available.

FPGA compilation for the newer 906x and 903x/904x is also somewhat slower than in the cloud but not that extreme. These use however the Vivado Toolchain.

[~Its_Me~]

Hey Rolfk, 

Thank you for the answer. I read everywhere you cannot install ISE14.7 under windows10. So that's why I went for the Linux VM option. When I try to install the FPGA software on Win10 I get a message telling me I have got the wrong OS version.

Do you remember how you did install the Labview FPGA software? Did you perform some special? Can you check if you did use ISE 10.1 or ISE 14.7 ?

thank you for the help!

[rolfk]

I got on my machine installed Vivado 2017_2, 2019_1, 2021_1 and Xilinx 14_7.

The Xilinx and Vivado 2017 supposedly got installed by LabVIEW FPGA 2018. The other two by LabVIEW FPGA 2020 and 2022 respectively.

[~Its_Me~ · Accepted solution]

Hey Rolfk,

I fixed it 🙂 some packages were still missing. I did write a summary hope I'll be of some help. 

This link gives an overview of hardware sported linked to software . Be aware in the table Windows can be limited to WIN7

Compatibility between Xilinx Compilation Tools and NI FPGA Hardware 

Software you need to download

Ni FPGA Compile tool 

The software to compile your FPGA code.

VirtualBox 

You need to install Fedora in VirtualBox.

Fedora 39 Xfce 

Fedora is a Red Hat based linux distro. Xfce is one of the light weight versions which will give you a desktopenvironment.

Make a virtual machine

I did use

40 gig of harddrive space

4 x CPU

16 gig of ram

Install Fedora

Not all libraries are installed when you install your Linux OS. Depending on your needs you need to install some extra libraries. The packages of libraries for Red Hat distributions are rpm based and can be installed with dnf (this used to be yum) via the command line or with the desktopenvironment with   applications ->  system -> dnfdragora

The compile worker needs 

libtiff.so.3()(64bit)

libungif.so4()(64bit)

XilinX complier needs

expat.i686
fontconfig.i686
freetype.i686
gamin.i686
glib2.i686
glibc.i686
libgcc.i686
libICE.i686
libselinux.i686
libSM.i686
libstdc++.i686
libuuid.i686
libX11.i686
libXau.i686
libxcb.i686
libXext.i686
libXi.i686
libXrandr.i686
libXrender.i686
nss-softokn-freebl.i686
zlib.i686
ncurses-libs.i686

gamin.i686

install the packages above before you install the Ni software. When you are done you can insert the Ni FPGA software in the Virtualbox DVD player. Copy your files to an install dir and read the readme the readme will tell you to run the install script.

before you run the install script open an console and type: 

df -h

This will give you information about partition sizes.

The files are unzipped on the /tmp I had to enlarge the /tmp . Because I got an error the disk size was too small. Be aware that the worker install needs about 8 gig. The FPGA compiler needs more, when the FPGA install fails because the /tmp is too small it will tell in the last sentence it did succeed! If you read a few lines above the end you will see a text telling the install did fail. I did end up using a temp of 14gig and did not check if a smaller size would work. So before the install script I did do:

mount -o remount,size=14G,noatime /tmp

you can do to check the new /tmp size agian with:

df -h

sh ./INSTALL

This will start the install.

Here is another link about setting up the software you did just install

Setting up a Linux-Based FPGA Compile Worker - NI 

Some notes

• The labview version I did use was LV2018 SP1
• When the FPGA code compiles it uses about 2 gig of RAM, installing the software with 4 gig of ram did fail. I did not check running with less than 16 gig of  RAM. 
• I did reserve 4 CPU's in my Virtualbox setup when I compile one FPGA at the time the Task manager of Fedora shows a CPU load of 50%
• I tested the compile for a Ni 9074 and a Ni9148 using the ISE 14.7 Xilinx compiler, I did not test the bitfile on a real target yet. But the compile tells me "succes". Although compile times will differ on every system etc . My compile did take 20 to 30 minutes.
• The CPU I did use is a i7-11850H

p.s. its late so I did not check for errors in the text