Buffer of PCI-MIO-16E-1 acquisition card

[AGT]

I am using a PCI-MIO-16E-1 acquisition card, and in the manual it says that it has a FIFO buffer of 512 samples. Is this the total buffer of my card? (I guess it should be larger). If I take more samples than can fit in the buffer in a single acquisition, what happens to the extra samples acquired? Are they stored in the computer memory?

Thank you

[RIO-Todd]

The PCI-MIO-16E-1 actually has a FIFO buffer size of 2048 samples. The hardware buffer size is not a limitation of how many samples you can read at a time. FIFOs are often used on DAQ devices to temporarily store incoming or outgoing data until that data can be read or written. For example, an analog input FIFO stores the results of A/D conversions until the data can be read into system memory.

So, the FIFO on the device will just hold the data temporarily until the computer can transfer the data to computer memory. FYI: When you programmatically set the buffer size in your application, you are setting the software buffer size in computer memory and that has nothing to do with the FIFO size. You don't have to worry about the FIFO within your program. I hope th
is helps.

Regards,

Todd D.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments