By Rick Nelson, Senior Technical Editor Figure 1. Graphical icons and a user function block representing HLL code in this SoftWire program control analog data acquisition. The program routes the output to a digital display and a scrolling chart. The binary code behind the graphics determines execution speed. The way a programming tool creates that binary code can lengthen the time it takes you to debug your test program as well as the time your finished program takes to execute in the production environment.
Several factors can limit the throughput of a measurement system.
The measurement delays within the instrumentation you are using are the most significant. If it takes a DMM a second or two to acquire a reading, the time your processor spends storing the measurement result or calculating a running average based on it will be insignificant. The execution speed of each object will in turn depend on whether the code is compiled or interpreted. If compiled, then the development program compiles a binary-code version of the entire graphical interface plus HLL text before execution. If interpreted, the development program generates binary-code representations of graphical or HLL text program objects as required during execution.