32-Channel PCI ADC Board Overcomes Speed Limitations

The 32-channel PCI-417N series parallel-sampling PCI analog-to-digital converter (ADC) board streams at 14-bit resolution. A 32-bit wide on-board DMA PCI bus master offloads the host CPU. To avoid the inherent settling delays and speed limitations of ADC/analog multiplexer combination designs, the board uses an ADC for each channel. Besides an increase in total system speed, the PCI-417N samples all channels exactly in parallel at rates up to 80 kHz per channel (5.12 Mbytes/s aggregate rate). This concurrent a-d sampling boosts performance in time-correlated applications, such as medical ultrasound, DSP sonar, or FFT engine testing. Each input ADC digitizes to 14-bit resolution, lowering system noise and increasing system dynamic range. Full-scale input voltage ranges of ±5 or ±10 V are selectable per channel. The PCI-417N1 with 8-ksample local ADC FIFO memory costs $2295. Equipped with a 256-ksample FIFO, the PCI-417N2 is priced at $2595.