Multiple FPGA targets under one cRIO controller

Question

Hi !
I was reading the cRIO System Configuration Information (CRI) Reference Library article (http://www.ni.com/example/51852/en/) and there Figure 9 shows a cRIO Controller with multiple FPGA targets. How can this be accomplished?
In my case, when I tried to add a 2nd FPGA target, under my cRIO-9076, I get a message that only one can be associated with the controller. 
Any ideas ?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

The CRI Library claims support back to LabVIEW 8.5.1, which leads me to believe this screenshot was taken in that version. The RIO Scan Interface/FPGA Scan Engine (RSI) were introduced in LabVIEW 8.6 and NI-RIO 3.0.x. In order to include this support, the notion of a chassis in the LV project was introduced (notice there is no chassis under the controller in the screenshot). To better facilitate RSI and the Scan Engine and provide a more accurate representation of what is actually available in a system, you can only add one chassis per controller. This allows the RSI to load the correct controllers for deployment.
In LV 8.5.1, you can add multiple targets to an integrated controller/FPGA system (like the cRIO-9072) even though there is no way that could happen in real life, so this isn't really that desirable. What you can still do is add multiple FPGA targets (even from cRIO chassis) under the My Computer target in your project. This will still allow you to communicate with the FPGA target, but any VIs will be running on your PC system, not the cRIO controller.
Donovan