New PCI Express
Waveform Digitizer Boasts 720 MB/s Data
Throughput to PC Memory
Montreal, Canada (September 12, 2007) - AlazarTech,
a manufacturer of high
performance, low cost PC Based Instruments,
today announced the release of
ATS9462, a 4-lane PCI Express (PCIe)
waveform digitizer designed for OEMs and R&D
customers involved in RF signal analysis,
biomedical imaging, OCT, ultrasonics, radar,
lidar, etc.ATS9462 provides 720 MB/s data
throughput to PC memory, thus enabling many
applications that were previously not possible due to
legacy PCI bus bottleneck, which is
typically limited to 100 MB/s.
ATS9462 offers two simultaneous analog
inputs that can each be sampled at rates up
to 180 MS/s (one 16 bit 180 MSPS ADC per
channel), providing Signal to Noise Ratio in
excess of 73 dB. Data from either one
or both inputs can be streamed to PC memory
without any requirement for on-board
acquisition memory buffer. The unit is
compatible with any x4, x8 or x16 PCIe slot.
The advanced 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 unique
feature is essential for designers of
optical and ultrasonic scanning systems.
"We realized 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",
stated Muneeb Khalid, President of
AlazarTech. "In order to provide the
utmost reliability, we integrated our PCIe
core, DMA engine, acquisition engine and
datapath in a single high
density Stratix II GX FPGA from Altera".
ATS9462 PCIe digitizers use FPGA-based
PHY (2.5Gbps 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.
Another very important feature of the
ATS9462 is the Stream to Disk
capability. In this mode, data generated by
the two on-board A/D converters is streamed
across the PCIe bus for storage in PC memory
or hard disk. Users can thus capture
100's of gigabytes or even terabytes worth
of gapless data.
All of these features are supported by
AlazarDSO, the new powerful oscilloscope
emulation software from AlazarTech. A
basic version of AlazarDSO is provided free
of charge with the purchase of an ATS9462
board. However, the Stream to Disk
option of AlazarDSO is sold separately.
The on-board FPGA can also be customized
for OEMs. Customization can include
simple control functions, such as extra
triggers or trigger enables, simple
mathematical functions, such as averaging,
and even complex DSP functions such as FIR
filters, demodulation and FFT.
OEMs can integrate the ATS9462 PCIe
digitizers into their own systems very
easily using Windows compatible ATS-SDK Software Development Kit. This
SDK includes sample programs written in
C/C++, C# and VisualBASIC. A high
performance LabVIEW VI, called ATS-VI, is
also available. A Linux driver, ATS-Linux,
is also available and supports kernel
version up to 2.6.
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