Krzysztof Kołek∗, Andrzej Turnau∗ FPGA AS A PART OF MS WINDOWS CONTROL ENVIRONMENT

The attention is focused on the Windows operating system (OS) used as a control and mea-surement environment. Windows OS due to extensions becomes a real-time OS (RTOS). Benefits and drawbacks of typical software extensions are compared. As far as hardware solutions are concerned the field programmable gate arrays FPGA technology is proposed to ensure fast time-critical operations. FPGA-based parallel execution and hardware implemen-tation of the data processing algorithms significantly outperform the classical microprocessor operating modes. Suitability of the RTOS for a particular application and FPGA hardware maintenance is studied