Chipping away at speed limits

By basing a controller on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip, it can be made to run up to a thousand times faster than a conventional computer-derived controller. It can also help to beef up robustness and, using graphical programming, much improve matters where benefits are to be found from tweaking one of the algorithms. While National Instruments has been hawking the idea about for a while, users are clearly beginning to take it up. There are target applications in aerospace, mainly in simulation. But, because the technology is far cheaper than conventional control, it also looks appropriate for automotive and industrial uses, especially for motor control. As well as the base technologies, which continue to be developed, NI and its customers have been learning new ways of making use of FPGA technologies, some of which were revealed at a recent Military/Aerospace Solutions Conference held at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon.