Last week in Austin, Tx., James Truchard, president, CEO and co-founder of National Instruments kicked off the 12th annual NIWeek by unveiling NI LabVIEW 8.20, the 20th anniversary edition of the graphical development platform. He offered some 2000-plus attendees a glimpse of how such graphical system design tools will evolve in the future. Incidentally, the virtual instrumentation pioneer was also celebrating its 30^th anniversary.

In his opening remark, Truchard said, "Our virtual instrumentation approach revolutionized the industry with its combination of software and hardware, redefining the way engineers and scientists work. With LabVIEW 8.20, we are on the frontier of graphical system design, extending virtual instrumentation to transform the way engineers design, prototype and deploy their complex, next-generation systems."

Traditionally, engineers have conducted design and test applications separately. With graphical system design, engineers can use the intuitive LabVIEW programming environment with modular off-the-shelf hardware platforms, such as NI CompactRIO and PXI, to simultaneously design and test new products and perform real-time measurements, hardware-in-the-loop testing (HIL), as well as embedded control and monitoring.

Furthermore, the speaker highlighted real-world applications of graphical system design, including a temperature monitoring and control system powered by the NI LabVIEW Embedded Module for ADI Blackfin processors and the Virginia Tech Challenge X hybrid vehicle based on LabVIEW and CompactRIO.

The keynoter also gave insight into the complexity of next-generation systems that will incorporate multiprocessors and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. His vision is to expand LabVIEW system capabilities to deliver multiple models of computation and asynchronous, heterogeneous multiprocessing to address increasing complexity. In addition, National Instruments is developing pioneering technologies including intermediate frequency reconfigurable I/O (IF-RIO) for creating complex IF design and test systems and FPGA-based digital testing for advanced applications, such as testing RFID.

Meanwhile, Jeff Kodosky, co-inventor of LabVIEW, closed NIWeek with his thoughts on the evolution of LabVIEW. He outlined how LabVIEW has grown from an inspirational, proof-of-concept prototype 20 years ago to a productive tool for designing and building measurement and control systems today. He also discussed usability and performance enhancements for future versions of LabVIEW, including continued development of object-oriented programming, timing and triggering features, debugging tools, and a new addition referred to as "Jeff's wire," which will simplify data exchange among asynchronous components of a LabVIEW diagram.

Kodosky concluded his speech by thanking the thousands of loyal LabVIEW users in attendance for their innovation, feedback, and suggestions over the past 20 years. "All of us on the development team enjoy living vicariously through you, as you work in so many different areas, building innovative applications and accomplishing so much," Kodosky said. "I invite you to continue to brainstorm with us on new ideas and help us prioritize them so we can all realize the dream for LabVIEW as it takes on an ever larger role in graphical system design."

Kodosky's work on LabVIEW spurred the development and widespread adoption of virtual instrumentation. In addition to his work at NI, he has made a significant impact working with The University of Texas at Austin to create UTeach, an innovative program that prepares students in the College of Science to become math and science teachers.