High-speed digitiser leads new range

Short PCI card format digitiser combines data convertor ASIC technology with a high level of component integration for significantly reduced power consumption of less than 15W

Agilent Technologies has introduced the first device in a new range of digitisers. The Acqiris DP1400 high-speed digitiser features a compact design and highly integrated technology for extremely low-power consumption as well as a unique simultaneous multibuffer acquisition and readout (SAR) mode that significantly improves measurement throughput.
Agilent acquired Acqiris in November 2006.

Designed in a standard short PCI card format, the compact Acqiris DP1400 combines data convertor ASIC technology with a high level of component integration for significantly reduced power consumption of less than 15W.

It can be used in all standard PCIbus slots, whether long or short, and is ideal for a variety of test applications, including semiconductor component test, hard disk drive production test and industrial nondestructive testing.
With the optional SAR mode, the onboard memory is separated into multiple buffers.

As data is acquired into one buffer, another can be read out through the 32bit/64MHz PCI at up to 250Mbyte/s.

In applications where the total datarate of the acquisition is below the PCI data bandwidth, the Acqiris DP1400 with SAR mode can acquire continuously, missing zero events.

The 8bit, dual-channel DP1400 features an analogue front-end mezzanine containing both signal conditioning and high-speed analogue-to-digital convertor (ADC) components.

Both inputs provide an AC- and DC-coupled digitising channel with 50ohm input impedance.

The real-time sampling rate of up to 1Gsample/s on each channel can be increased up to 2Gsample/s real-time sampling in single channel mode by interleaving the ADCs.

The standard 256Kpoint of onboard memory can be segmented for burst mode acquisitions with an impressive 350 ns of intersegment dead time.

When more than two data-acquisition channels are required, the Acqiris DP1400 digitisers can be synchronised using the 2GHz auto-synchronisation bus (AS Bus 2), a proprietary, high-bandwidth bus system to connect multiple digitisers.

The AS Bus 2 distributes both the clock and trigger signals among all the digitisers that participate in the system.

It allows any digitiser to generate the trigger while the central digitiser acts as the common synchronous clock source.

With software drivers for Windows, Linux, LabViewRT and VxWorks as well as application code examples for Matlab, C++, VisualBasic, LabView and LabWindows, the Acqiris DP1400 easily integrates into existing measurement systems.

The flexibility of the driver means that, with minimum software adjustments, any Acqiris digitiser can be exchanged, replaced or upgraded with the latest high-speed Acqiris digitiser.

Pricing for the high-speed Acqiris DP1400 digitiser starts at US $9490.