Digitiser platform improves data acquisition speeds

Acquisition data is stored inside the 4GByte on-board buffer and can be read out at more than 3 GByte/s through the PCI Express x8 Gen2 interface. The ¾ card length plug-in cards are compatible to Gen1 and Gen3 and need a PCI Express slot with 8 or 16 physical lanes.

The first released model based on the new platform - the M4i.4451-x8 - comes with four channels and 500 MS/s synchronous sampling speed at 14 bit ADC resolution. A smaller version with two channels and 500 MS/s is also available. Both versions have a signal bandwidth of 250 MHz.

To optimise data storage and bus transfer, repetitive signals can be stored into separate segments using Multiple Recording mode while transferring data in parallel. The compact M4i card is already equipped with different acquisition modes like single-shot, streaming (FIFO), segmented (Multiple Recording), gated (Gated Sampling) or the combination of segmented acquisition of fast signals in parallel to slow continuous data recording (ABA mode).  All trigger events can be time stamped.  Timestamp clock can either be based on the internal clock circuit or an externally fed-in time reference signal. 

The four (or two) input channels are completely separated and have one monolithic ADC per channel, as well as its own high precision pre-amplifier. Each amplifier can be configured separately by software. Software can select one of six input ranges (±200 mV up to ±10 V), 50 Ohm or 1 MOhm input impedance and AC or DC coupling. Furthermore a bandwidth filter can be activated which suppresses high frequency noise signals.

The M4i cards have an extremely powerful trigger engine that can combine the two external trigger inputs with channel trigger of each channel by a logical OR or AND. The channel trigger detection can be programmed for edge, level, window or pulse width.

Up to eight M4i cards can run synchronously in one system. The star-hub module option distributes clock and trigger signals between the cards. The star-hub module can combine all of the trigger sources of all connected cards making it possible to use any trigger source as a starting event for the complete system. Using the star-hub, a total of 32 channels with 500 MS/s and 14-bit resolution can be acquired simultaneously. 

All features of the new card series are fully supported by Spectrum's own software SBench 6. SBench 6 has been optimised to handle several GByte large signals and is running natively under Windows and Linux, both 32 bit and 64 bit. With this, SBench is the first out-of-the-box measurement software with full Linux support.