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Stream Simultaneous Digitizer Data over Fiber Optic Cable

New Host Bus Adapter ACQ-FIBER-HBA enables a low cost, high speed fiber optic streaming data connection between D‑TACQ Intelligent Simultaneous Digitizers and a remote host PC.

ACQ-FIBER-HBA uses industry-standard SFP transceiver modules to connect to RTM-T, a new Rear Transition Module, compatible with existing ACQ196CPCI, ACQ132CPCI and ACQ164CPCI digitizers.

ACQ-FIBER-HBA provides a transparent connection to RTM-T; the software interface works in exactly the same way as the existing copper PCIe on cable driver, enabling an easy progression from PCIe on copper to fiber optic. The principal benefits of fiber-optic are galvanic isolation and much longer maximum transmission distances. ACQ-FIBER-HBA has two SFPworld ports and can support two remote acquisition devices, each streaming data at up to 128MB/s. ACQ-FIBER-HBA conforms to the PCI Express card standard, and will plug into any PCIe slot on a modern motherboard.

RTM-T provides a fast data path direct to gigabit serial links:

  • PCI-Express on Cable 1x
  • Fiber SFP
  • Gigabit Ethernet

D‑TACQ firmware uses an efficient DMA implementation capable at streaming data at over 200MBytes/second with minimum host computer overhead. The PCI-Express interface conforms to the the "PCIe on Cable" standard, allowing use of low cost off the shelf cabling and cable adapters; the SFP interface allows users to choose the appropriate transceiver and fiber cable type that best suits their application, while ACQ-FIBER-HBA provides a convenient and high performance base station link to receive the data in a remote host PC.

Example usage:

All streaming direct to a host PC on a dedicated fiber optic link:

Key Features:

  • The data interface is capable of streaming data indefinitely.
  • Streaming to disk is supported, to the limit of attached disk storage size.
  • Multiple cards can stream data to the same host, to the limit of host bus transfer capacity. Since each ACQ196CPCI or ACQ132CPCI card has its own RTM-T card and therefore its own dedicated data link, this solution is highly scalable.
  • RTM-T may be retrofitted to existing cards.