PXI chassis

[siva1]

Is it possible to customize the NI PXIe 1075 chassis? For example,

I have the NI PXIe 1075 chassis with 18 slots, out of which 10 slots are ocuupied by NI FPGA and DAQ cards. Is it possible to add a cutom or third party FPGA card to any of the remaining slot so that i can control the existing FPGA cards? If so, how is the communication between them attained. IS it possible to have peer to peer communication between the two?

Please clarify.

[sumit.sen]

As far as adding a 3rd party card is concerned, that is completely possible since PXI is an open platform. I am unsure about "control the existing FPGA cards". The cards in the chassis are controlled by the controller which controls the PCI or PCIe bus.

[siva1]

OK. Is it possible for communicating with new FPGA? For eg., if i need to do some processing of the signals from the NI FPGA card using this new FPGA, is there any concern?

[sumit.sen]

If the card has drivers for LabVIEW, you can use it in a LabVIEW VI. However, just for the clarification NI FPGA does VIs don't work for 3rd party FPGA cards. Kindly confirm with compatibility of 3rd party FPGA card with LabVIEW if you looking to program all your components with LabVIEW

[siva1]

I have 2 queries regarding your reply.

Q1: If the card is LabVIEW supported, can i access the signals in all the NI FPGA cards and do the processing in the third party or custom FPGA?

Q2: If the card has got LabVIEW support, I hope the following solution is possible.

• Import VHDL code from the NI FPGA card to the third party card.
• Do the remaining processing.

Is my assumption correct?

[sumit.sen]

In LabVIEW FPGA, an FPGA card is a target of execution. The I/O from the FPGA has to be sent to the Windows or RT controller first and then it can be shared with other FPGA cards. Provided, the 3rd party FPGA card is supported in LabVIEW, it should be possible to use all the cards together.

The VHDL code for NI FPGA card is not available and is hidden from the user at all times. Hence, you cannot access it.

[siva1]

As per my understanding, if the card supports peer to peer data streaming, then there is no need to communicate with Windows or RT controller. Is it correct?

[sumit.sen]

Sir, the architecture of PXI and NI FPGA is such that it needs to send data across to the windows host or RT host in order for the data to be shared with some other card. The I/O node inside an FPGA target is local and cannot be shared with another FPGA. 

[siva1]

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/10801

Please see the figure 1 in the above link. The communication is between two cards. Hope now you got my question.

[sumit.sen]

As stated in the link, "NI P2P technology is supported on PXI Express NI FlexRIO field-programmable gate array (FPGA) modules (NI PXIe-7961R, PXIe-7962R, and PXIe-7965R) and PXI Express digitizers and vector signal analyzers, including the NI PXIe-5122, PXIe-5622, and PXIe-5663." The P2P won't work on other conventional FPGA cards like 7830R or 7831R, etc. So, I am unsure if the NI-P2P driver will support a 3rd party FPGA.