Product category:
Stand-Alone Instruments
News Release from: Alazar Technologies | Subject: ATS9462 waveform digitiser
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 17 September 2007
Waveform digitiser offers high data
rates
4-lane PCI Express waveform digitiser offers 720 MB/s data throughput to PC memory.
The ATS9462 is a two-channel, 180Msample/s, 16bit waveform digitiser that can stream data to PC host memory at rates as high as 720Mbit/s No onboard memory is needed, as the PC memory can be used to store the acquired data
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 27 Nov 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Data from either one or both inputs can be streamed to PC memory without any requirement for an onboard acquisition memory buffer.
The unit is compatible with any x4, x8 or x16 PCIe slot.
The FPGA on board the ATS9462 contains FIFOs and proprietary DMA engines that allow streaming of acquired data to PC memory without having to stop the acquisition session.
This feature is essential for designers of optical and ultrasonic scanning systems.
"We realised that the bus throughput of the legacy PCI bus was becoming a bottleneck for many of our OEM customers".
"Moving to PCI Express was a natural next step", Muneeb Khalid, President of AlazarTech said.
"In order to provide the utmost reliability, we integrated our PCIe core, DMA engines, acquisition engine and datapath in a single high-density Stratix II GX FPGA from Altera".
ATS9462 PCIe digitisers use FPGA-based PHY (2.5Gbit/s transceivers) to interface to the PCIe bus.
The same FPGA is also used for control and data processing.
This very high level of integration allows for a very reliable acquisition system.
In Stream To Disk mode data generated by the two on-board A/D convertors is streamed across the PCIe bus for storage in PC memory or a hard disk.
Users can thus capture hundreds of gigabytes or even terabytes worth of gapless data.
All these features are supported by AlazarDSO oscilloscope emulation software from AlazarTech.
A basic version of AlazarDSO is provided free of charge with the ATS9462 board.
The Stream To Disk option is sold separately.
The on-board FPGA can also be customised for OEMs.
Customisation can include simple control functions such as extra triggers or trigger enables, simple mathematical functions,such as averaging, and complex DSP functions such as FIR filters, demodulation and FFT.
OEMs can integrate the ATS9462 PCIe digitisers into their own systems using the Windows-compatible ATS-SDK software development kit (SDK).
This SDK includes sample programs written in C/C++, C# and VisualBasic.
A LabView VI called ATS-VI is also available.
A Linux driveris also available and supports kernel version up to 2.6.
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