Multiple simultaneous camera link acquitision with PCI-1426

[DSA]

Hi,

We want to simultaneously acquire images from 4 camera link cameras. All cameras must be synchronised. I guess that the triggering options from the PCI-1426 card allow to easily synchronise the cameras. But is it possible to put 4 cards in a single computer without conflicts and without loosing acquisition speed ?

Regards,

David St-Arneault
AEREX Avionics Inc.

[Scott_R]

Hello David,

Placing all four 1426 boards onto the same computer could cause a reduction in your acquisition speed because all four boards would be sharing the PCI bus. This means that the frame rate would be limited by the bandwidth of the bus which would be shared amongst all four boards. Depending on the frame rate, the bit-depth that you specify and the image sizes that you want, this may or may not present a problem. The bandwidth required for acquisition can be found by multiplying the desired frame rate by the area of the image that you are acquiring (width x height) and multiplying that by the byte-depth of the image. For 8 bit images, the byte-depth is 1, and for 10, 12, and 14 bit images, the byte-depth will be 2. This calculation must be performed for all four boards and the results will be added to determine the total bandwidth needed.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions on this issue.

Regards,
Scott R.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments