Monitoring the Compilation of a Build Specification

An FPGA target contains a limited number of resources. If a build spec requires more resources than the FPGA target has available, the compilation of the build spec fails. LabVIEW reports the estimated and actual number of resources used by a build spec to help you determine changes you need to make to the code.

Compilation can take a long time, so you can monitor the process and cancel a compilation if you encounter severe errors, instead of waiting for the entire process to finish.

Complete the following steps to monitor the compilation of a build spec.

1. Double-click a build spec row listed in the Compile Queue pane to monitor the status of your build spec during compilation. After the synthesizing stage of compilation, LabVIEW reports the estimated FPGA resources that your build spec requires.
2. Click the resources listed under Estimated Resource Usage during compilation to view the estimated number of each resource used by the build spec. If LabVIEW estimates that your build spec needs more resources than the FPGA target contains, you can cancel the compilation and revise your code. If you cancel a compilation, you must begin a new compilation to compile your updated code.
3. Click the resources listed under Actual Resource Usage after the compilation finishes to see the total number of each resource used on the FPGA target. If your compilation fails, you can use the resource usage information to investigate errors or determine changes you need to make in your code. For example, if your build spec uses all LUTs from the FPGA, but few block RAMs, you may need to change the way implement memory or FIFOs in your code.