NI LINUX RT: Support for 3rd party Intel and ARM processors?

[M@nu]

I have 2 questions over here:-

1. Although NI officially doesn't support it, does the NI Linux RT work with 3rd party Intel and ARM processors?

If yes which processors(versions and architectures) from Intel and ARM does it work on?

2. Also there are some new cRIOs with Linux RT which have Display port to connect the monitor to and view the HMI designed on the cRIO. Usually speaking in lay man terms RT is supposed to be headless, so the second question is does NI Linux RT support a GUI. If yes, on which processor, if no what restricts it?

Thanks in advance

[BradM]

Hey M@nu,

Those are good questions, and ones that we get pretty often.

Although NI officially doesn't support it, does the NI Linux RT work with 3rd party Intel and ARM processors?

Basically, there are two possible answers to the first question, depending on what exactly you mean when you ask "does [...] NI Linux RT work with [similar hardware]".

If, in that question, you take NI Linux RT to mean the entire stack of software (OS and NI software that makes MAX, LabVIEW RT, etc.), then the answer is not directly, currently, but if you're interested you should contact your local NI sales engineer to work through what licensing and support would look like.

If, instead, you meant supporting running the NI Linux RT OS (and that is the official, correct delineation: the OS itself is named NI Linux RT), the answer is "yes, you could run it, but you'd probably be better served starting with a Linux system meant for your hardware and use a PREEMPT_RT kernel".

Also there are some new cRIOs with Linux RT which have Display port to connect the monitor to and view the HMI designed on the cRIO. Usually speaking in lay man terms RT is supposed to be headless, so the second question is does NI Linux RT support a GUI. If yes, on which processor, if no what restricts it?

The second question is a bit interesting. Specifically, RT means that a system, when tasked with some work to do, will be very predictable in regards to how long performing that work will take. This means that the system is very predictable and can handle timing-sensitive operations. There's no real definition or requirement of whether or not such a system would have a UI or what the interface would look like.

Now, if you are speaking about LabVIEW RT targets, it is true that in the past they have not really had direct, connected UI (other than the read-only system status on x86 Pharlap targets or the low-level windsh shell/c-interpreter interface through the serial console on VxWorks target.

As it stands, currently the x86_64-based targets have a GUI that can be enabled and used to see the currently-running VI (as well as interacting with the underlying OS) that is accessible through the mini DisplayPort connector on these target. For the Zynq-based controllers, there is no built-in UI support, and as such there is not support for displaying the current VI running on the target. There are third-party add-ons to provide a simple UI for these targets, but they will not support displaying a traditional desktop UI nor the currently-running VI.