When writing LabVIEW code for an FPGA target, the most important considerations are speed and resource usage. By using the single-cycle timed loop (SCTL), we can increase the speed of the program by allowing more than one operation to complete per clock cycle. We also decrease resource usage by removing the flip-flops that would be required to store values between clock cycles for the operations in the SCTL.
However, there are limitations of the SCTL. For some operations, it takes significantly less resources to implement something using a for loop rather than a single-cycle timed loop. With a for loop, one can auto-index a result at the border of the for loop (if the preallocation of arrays option is selected) to obtain a fixed-size array (valid on the FPGA). Below is the simplest possible example:
The equivalent with a single-cycle timed loop would be:
The replace array/subset VI consumes resources proportional to the size of the array. Depending on the operation being performed, this can increase resource usage such that it is more practical to use a for loop (as shown above).
I propose the creation of a single-cycle timed for loop. Here is a very rough mock-up (MS Paint is not the most adequate of image processing tools... you will get the idea):
This solves two problems: 1) It allows for the compiler to know how many times to loop will run at compile time. It also simplifies the UI by letting the user know how many times the loop will run without having to think through a condition. 2) It allows for the more efficient creation of fixed-size arrays through a SCTL (rather than through a for loop).
