New PCI Express waveform digitizer boasts 720 MB/s data throughput to PC memory

AlazarTech, a manufacturer of high performance, low cost PC Based Instruments, has 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 avanced 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 engines, 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 its 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 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 the 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.

AlazarTech