Why does opening and closing FPGA references increase Windows XP handles by 3?

Question

Hello.
We run a test system here that uses TestStand to communicate
to a number of Labview VI modules which in turn communicates to a
PXI-7833R FPGA. Everything has been working fine except after a long time running Labview would get an out of memory error. I discovered
after a particular VI was run 100,000 times, the number of handles in Windows XP Task
Manager grew to about 370,000. The number of threads and processes remains stable and normal. Closing Labview removes all the excessive handles.
I tried an experiment to create a standalone VI (ie: no TestStand) which simply opens the FPGA VI reference then closes the reference. This is repeated 4 times in the same VI. The number of handles in Windows XP Task
Manager increased by 12 each time the VI was run. No errors. This indicates closing the FPGA reference might not be working.
Why does this happen? Is there a way to avoid it? The version of Labview is 8.5.1.
Appreciate any help here. Thanks.
-Dave

Answer 1

could be related to this known issue--
FPGA FIFO reset behavior—When you use an FPGA target
emulator, FPGA FIFOs reset when the VI is stopped and then started
again. When you use an FPGA target with Interactive Front Panel
Communication, FPGA FIFOs do not reset when the FPGA VI is stopped and
then started again. To reset the FIFO, right-click the FPGA target in
the Project Explorer window and select Download
from the shortcut menu. When you control an FPGA VI using Programmatic
FPGA Interface Communication, use the Close FPGA VI Reference function
with the Close and Reset shortcut menu option selected or the Invoke Method with the Reset method selected to reset FPGA FIFOs
see Knowledgebase
Also remeber to load the FPGA Read/Write VI's dynamically from testStand and dump them after.  Thechange to the data type causes the vi to need to recompile so it can't stay in memory if you need different types of data.
Message Edited by Jeff Bohrer on 10-27-2009 02:21 PM
Jeff