High-Speed Digitizers – Optimized for Automated Test
NI High-Speed Digitizers: Optimized
for Automated Test
Prior to these products, high-bandwidth digitizers and oscilloscopes have
incorporated features and functionality best suited for benchtop use. An
unaddressed area in this high-bandwidth space has been the automated
test use model, where measurement throughput and test system
footprint can dramatically affect overall cost of test.
NI high-speed digitizers are the first high-bandwidth digitizers on the
market that share three characteristics making them uniquely optimized
for automated test: high data throughput, tight synchronization between
channels, and ease of integration with other instrumentation.
Tight Synchronization between Channels
The PXI backplane offers a built-in common reference clock for
synchronization of multiple digitizers in a measurement or control
system. Each slot has a 10 MHz TTL clock, transmitted on equal-length
traces, providing picosecond-level synchronization between digitizer
modules for high-channel-count systems. For example, it is possible to
have 34 phase-synchronous 1 GS/s channels in a single PXI chassis, and
even scale to higher channel counts.
High Data Throughput
Bus bandwidth and latency, two common considerations for an automated
test system, dictate the overall speed of your measurement system.
Latency describes the amount of time it takes for an instrument to respond
to a remote command, like a measurement query. Bus bandwidth refers
primarily to the data throughput capacity of the data bus that connects the
measurement instrument with the host PC or controller.
The PXI platform – upon which NI high-speed digitizers are built –
provides high speed due to the high-bandwidth and low-latency PCI and
PCI Express buses. Both PXI and PXI Express data throughput rates are
significantly faster than that of GPIB, USB, or LAN – other popular buses
for automating test instrumentation. This translates to lower test times.
Figure 2. The PXI platform delivers picosecond-level synchronization
between instrument modules.
Ease of Integration with Other Instrumentation
Test systems typically contain many instrument types, including signal
sources, measurement devices, and switches. The PXI platform has
unparalleled breadth, with modules for analog and digital I/O, high-
speed instrumentation, vision, motion, and numerous bus interfaces.
More than 1,500 PXI modules are available from the more than 70
members of the PXI Systems Alliance (PXISA). So you can not only build
a comprehensive test system in a single chassis but also synchronize
modules in that chassis to picosecond-level accuracy when using
NI modular instrumentation.
Figure 1. The PXI platform provides the best combination of high-bandwidth and
low-latency measurement throughput.
Figure 3. The PXI platform supports more than 1,500 instrument modules.
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