Gage Applied ::. Data acquisition, test & measurement, digital oscilloscope

Introducing the new PCI Express CompuScope family with Data Streaming

Lockport, Illinois (July 13, 2011) - GaGe, a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance PC-based digitizer and oscilloscope cards, today introduced PCI Express highspeed, high-resolution, multi-channel digitizers. PCI Express CompuScope families include existing Octopus and Razor families, as well as a new low-cost family of high-resolution multichannel Oscar CompuScopes. All PCI Express CompuScopes are equipped with 1 GigaSample or more of dual-port memory and can support data streaming, which allows waveform data to be transferred directly to PC RAM. This new functionality opens the door to a whole new domain of customer applications.

"When added to their already high signal fidelity, flat frequency response, high memory and wide channel count, the enhanced transfer speed and streaming capability of our new PCI Express CompuScopes make them truly unmatched in the industry," said Andrew Dawson, Vice President, Gage Sales for DynamicSignals LLC. Implicit in Dr. Dawson's comments is the fact that the Razor and Octopus CompuScope families have been available for a few years on the PCI platform and their high fidelity has a proven track record. As compared with their PCI counterparts, only the memory management and bus communication circuitry are different on the PCI Express Razor and Octopus models.

Gage PCI Express CompuScopes operate in a full-length 8-lane (X8) Gen2 PCI Express slot. A single PCI lane provides a maximum theoretical throughout of 500 MB/s. With 8-lanes, PCI Express CompuScopes therefore provide a maximum theoretical throughput of 4 GB/s. In practice, bus latencies and hand-shaking protocols limit the maximum sustained throughput to about 3 GB/s – over 10 times faster than the fastest version of the PCI bus.

In addition to providing traditional fast Gage data transfer, PCI Express CompuScopes are equipped with a dual-port on-board memory architecture that allows the memory to be simultaneously written-to and read-from. Dynamic Signals has exploited this architecture in offering comprehensive Data Streaming functionality for all PCI Express CompuScopes.

CompuScope Streaming functionality is extensively described in the Express Data Streaming data sheet. The Express Data Streaming sheet provides a detailed description of the two available Gage Streaming solutions:

I. Stream-to-Disk Systems: These turn-key systems allow Streaming to a high-speed hard drive array with no programming required. The systems are offered for customers who require no access to waveform data during its acquisition and simply want to use the system as a highspeed data recorder. Resultant stream data files may be read and analyzed in any programming language. Gage Sales agents and Gage application engineers design a Stream-to-Disk system to address each specific customer's requirement.

II. Stream-to-Analysis: This functionality enables all customers who want to incorporate Streaming functionality into their own C application program. Customer can analyze, display or transfer the data stream during acquisition as required.

Gage has designed a comprehensive mechanism for managing occasional data loss that may occur during Streaming under non-real-time operating systems like Windows. This mechanism is unique in the industry and addresses issues whose discussion is often avoided by competitors.

Summary of Key Features

2, 4 or 8 digitizing channels
Up to 200 MS/s maximum sampling per channel
12, 14 or 16 bits vertical resolution
1 GS to 16 GS on-board acquisition memory
Up to 125 MHz input bandwidth
High voltage input of ±50V
Full-size, single-slot X8 PCI Express card
Master/slave multi-card synchronization
Full-featured front-end, with software control over input ranges, coupling and impedances
32 bits, 66 MHz PCI standard for 200 MB/s transfer to PC memory
Ease of integration with External or Reference Clock In and Clock Out, External Trigger In and Trigger Out
Comprehensive PCI Express Data Streaming support

Software Support

Drivers for Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, XP and 2000 are supplied with the card, as well as a free Lite Edition of GaGe's powerful GageScope® PC Oscilloscope software. SDK's for LabVIEW, MATLAB, and C/C# are also available, as is Linux support.

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For Further Information

For further information, contact Andrew Dawson, Sales Manager

About GaGe

GaGe (www.gage-applied.com), a brand of DynamicSignals LLC (DynamicSignals.com), is a worldwide industry leader in high-performance signal capture. GaGe, KineticSystems, Preston Scientific and Cyber Systems, all brands of the DynamicSignals growing family, serve a wide-range of industries by providing instruments and modules for PC-based test and measurement systems and synthetic instrumentation built on the PCI, CompactPCI, PXI, VXI, CAMAC and proprietary platforms.

GaGe's product offering includes a family of multi-MHz to GHz digitizers and scope cards, analog signal generator cards, digital input and digital output cards, as well as the programming-free GageScope ® oscilloscope software and a vast array of powerful Software Development Kits (SDKs).

GaGe's family of signal capture products consists of the CompuScope line of 8-bit, 12-bit, 14-bit and 16-bit digitizers and scope cards for the PCI and CompactPCI/PXI buses. With sampling rates up to 2 GS/s and very deep on-board acquisition memory of up to 4 Gigabytes, GaGe's product line offers the top performance on the market today in the 3 key dimensions of sampling speed, resolution, and memory.

The company's customer focus translates into products that are used across diverse industries such as Communications, Computers, Military/Aerospace, Fundamental Research, and Education. Applications served are Manufacturing Test, Radar (SIGINT), Ultrasonics, Lasers/LIDAR, Spectroscopy, Automated Test Equipment, etc.

For more information on GaGe or any of its products, contact the company at 900 N. State Street , Lockport , IL 60441.

Telephone 1-800-567-GAGE Fax 1-800-780-8411

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