Upgrade from LabVIEW 2011 to 202x with PCIe-7851R (FPGA)

[Freeze24]

Hi everybody,

I would have a question concerning upgrading LabVIEW 2011 on a system with an FPGA card and I hope, that somebody can help, since I have no experience with (NI) FPGAs.

We have a 10-years old IPC with XP and LabVIEW 2011 running and it has a PCIe-7851R FPGA card installed.

If I would upgrade this IPC to a more recent hardware with Windows 10/11 and LabVIEW 202x and keep the FPGA card as it is: Do I run into any problems then? Would I somehow need to recompile and reflash the FPGA or will it keep on running as it is (untouched)?

Just to be clear: I don't need to change anything in the FPGA. It's okay just as it is and I just want to upgrade the PC.

Thank you very much in advance!

[UliB]

You should have a close look at 

https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/compatibility/19/compatibility-between-xilinx-compilatio... 

PCI-7851R needs ISE 10.1 Compilation Tools.

ISE 10.1 Compilation Tools is supported by LabVIEW 2020, but not newer LV versions.

You say you do not need to change anything in FPGA. Maybe you can use the bitfile you have?

But I suspect LV needs to recompile the FPGA in a new LV version. It's been a long time since I last worked with LV FPGA, so I might be completely wrong here.

[ZYOng]

While officially it is recommended to recompile the bit file using the same version of LVFPGA, I have used bitfile compiled with LVFPGA 2020 in LV2021 successfully without any issue.

[Freeze24 · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your input so far.

Since it's not totally clear, I contacted the NI support with the following answer:

If the hardware is still supported, you can also use an older bit file (lvbitx) that has already been compiled without having to create it again. The whole thing is described again here: https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000kGrXSAU&l=de-DE".

So it’s important, that the Bitfile is used to open the FPGA reference, which is actually true for my setup.

I am not aware of any incompatibilities here, but I do not want to exclude them either.
The bit file should be executable in any case. You could also move it to the flash, which is certainly independent of the LabVIEW version:
https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/bundle/labview-fpga-module/page/downloading-an-fpga-vi-to-the-flash-me...
The bit file is therefore executable regardless of the version in any case, but the interface could actually have been changed under certain circumstances, i.e. the FPGA then runs, but you cannot communicate with it from the real time.
Here the question is whether your application only consists of a bit file (FPGA code) or communicates with an application on the industrial computer.
If there is a host application, the computer must of course have the appropriate LabVIEW and LabVIEW real-time version. The card is supported up to NI R Series Multifunction RIO 21.5. This driver is supported until LabVIEW 2020.

Since there is a communication between the host and the FPGA, I’m limited to the Multifunction RIO 21.5 and thus to LabVIEW 2020. So unfortunately no Windows 11 is possible with the PCIe-7851R.

Fun fact btw: During this research I found several mistakes on the NI support pages (here they say that Windows 10 is only compatible up to Multifunction RIO 15 and that Windows 11 is supported by Multifunction RIO 21.5 – both wrong; here they say that the PCIe-7851R is supported by CompactRIO 15.0 to Current – that’s wrong, it’s only supported by Multifunction RIO up to 21.5), but they will correct those.