Do I have the ability to address more than 2Gb of RAM with a 1429 system now?

[CSD]

I have two NI PCIe 1429 systems at my facility now, paired with two Basler 504k cameras for my vision work.  Can I upgrade these systems to Vista 64 (with appropriate drivers) and be able to capture to computer ram above the 2Gb boundary imposed by 32 bit applications?  I use CVI 8.x and LabVIEW 8.2 to do vision work with my 1429 systems.  I've seen conflicting posts on the Machine Vision board, so I thought I would try to get a feel for the situation as it stands today.  Thanks in advance.

[Maclean]

Hello,

Thanks for posting to the NI forums! Our products can be run on 64 bit versions of Windows, but they run in 32 bit mode. This means you will not be able to address memory above 4Gb, which is the physical limit of a 32 bit integer address. In older versions of Windows, the OS gave each program 2Gb of virtual memory, and kept 2Gb for kernel space. In Vista, this has been expanded to 128Gb, of which you can access 4Gb with your 32 bit integer pointers in C. Why are you wanting to address higher memory registers in your program? If you are trying for very fast frame rates, try streaming to disk and then doing post processing. Below are two helpful links:

A Closer Look at Windows Vista, Part III: 32-Bit vs. 64-Bit Windows
Which NI Vision Products Support Windows Vista?

Regards,

[CSD]

I already have the capability to stream most/all of the data stream from the 504 to disk.  I want to be able to provide a large circualr image buffer in memory to my program.  Although being able to address 4 Gb is an improvement over WinXP.  Looks like I'll be purchasing Vista 64 bit, and some more RAM to try all this out.  Thanks for the help

[RyanF]

CSD,

Just so you're aware, the next release of NI-IMAQ will support 64-bit user-mode applications.  However, until there is a 64-bit version of LV and CVI, you'll be limited to building your 64-bit application with MSVC.  If you end up using MSVC to compile your application, you'll have access to the 128Gb of paged memory allowed by Vista 64. The 8.5.1 release of Vision Acquisition should occur by the end of the year.

Hope this helps your plans,

Ryan F.

[CSD]

Thanks for letting me know that.  I'll look at programming my DLL with MSVC to have access to "boatloads" of RAM.  Any idea when LV and CVI will go 64 bit?

[BlueCheese]

Hi CSD,

One other option available right now is that since the current Vision Acquisition release and the 1429 both fully support 64-bit kernels, you can still address more than 2GB of memory in the system, just each 32-bit process is limited to 2GB of user memory (possibly more if you have the /3GB kernel switch enabled, but that's another story). Since that limitation is per-process, if you have multiple processes they can each get their own space.

Since you have two 1429's you could make a built LabVIEW app and run two instances of it, one per board. Assuming the streaming to disk you are doing is independent between the two cameras, you may be able to split it up easily in this manner. Another option is to send the data between processes using something like TCP/IP and have multiple applications each handling a single acquisition with a full ~2GB image ring and sending the data to a 3rd process that multiplexes the data together and writes to disk. Note that the viability of this option may depend on CPU and memory bandwidth your system has compared to the data rate you are trying to achieve.

Hope this helps,

Eric

Message Edited by BlueCheese on 09-04-2007 05:57 PM

[CSD]

I think you misunderstood the statement that I have two 1429's and two Basler 504k's.  I meant I have two computers each with its own 1429 and its own Basler 504k.  Thanks for your suggestion, but I believe I'll use what I have now and experiment with Vista and the Vision Acquisition drivers 8.5.1.