> We have received new biotech robotic system with LabVIEW control
> software. One of the software task is image recognition (robotic
> vision system). During images processing tasks memory is not used
> hard, but the CPU is always at 100 % utilization. Now the software is
> running at the computer with ordinary P4 2.4GHz.
> Question: is there any sense to use Xeon system or
> multiprocessors system for the images processing acceleration? How
> deep is the LabVIEW code optimized for the different processors?
The LV code isn't very optimized specific to different CPU
architectures. A machine with bigger chip caches will probably give the
biggest advantage.
As for multiCPU, this really depends on how a LV diagram is written. I
saw a presentat
ion several years ago showing the gains a multiprocessor
system would give you in a vision system. If the diagrams are written
with parallelism in mind and the IMAQ VIs are made reentrant, the
multiple was good, close to the number of processors. But of course, if
there is no parallelism on the diagram, or the subVIs aren't reentrant,
the other processors have little to work on.
I'd ask the manufacturer of the biotech system if they have tried it or
designed it to scale. If I'm misunderstanding and you bought it from
NI, then I assume you have access to enough of the source code to make
things reentrant and program for parallelism. If you have trouble
writing your code for parallelism, ask more questions.
Greg McKaskle
