Choosing the Right HIL Platform

Every transportation test program has its own mix of signal types, environments, and scale. NI offers two HIL approaches to fit your purpose: HIL and Compact HIL.

Both run the same real-time test software and can validate the same ECUs, controllers, and systems. The following table highlights some differences.

Criteria	HIL	Compact HIL
Environment	Lab or rack-based	Industrial and field applications
FPGA	Needs FPGA cards	Embedded FPGA on each controller
Portability	Limited	Portable
Channel Density	High	Low
Computational performance	Best	Good

Bottom Line

Choose HIL for fixed, high-density, high-performance lab testing. Choose Compact HIL when ruggedness, portability, and cost matter more than channel count or peak compute. Once you’ve made this call, the rest of your system architecture — I/O modules, chassis sizing, software configuration — can be built around it.