With availability of fast FlexRIO cards (such as NI 5761) and FPGA framegrabbers (NI 1483, PXIe-1435, NI PCIe-1433 ) data rates of 1GB/s are becoming commonplace. However, the FPGA Module is limited to communication only with 32-bit LabVIEW. Since, typically you want to store more than 2 seconds of data in RAM,you would like to use 64-bit LabVIEW as your host application. Unfortunately, this isn't possible yet.
While, I can imagine that a full blown 64-bit FPGA Module add on would be pretty difficult to build (and especially test), I believe there is a solid middle ground at this point. I can imagine, coding and compiling the FPGA in the normal 32-bit LabVIEW environment, and then just using a 64-bit host application to Read/Write front panel controls and to read/write the DMA buffers from the FPGA. I don't know the details, but this communication protocols could be very low hanging fruit if it's just a simple matter of recompiling a few key pieces for 64-bit operation.
Since the data rates passing to and from FPGAs will continue to climb, as well as the prevalence of 64-bit OS, a 64-bit version of FPGA Module is needed in the new feature pipeline. This should also be kept in mind as other new FPGA Module features and tools are created, as planning for 64-bit compatability now will make the eventual transition to 64-bit much, much easier down the road.
