Product category:
I/O devices
News Release from: Spectrum Systementwicklung Microelectronic | Subject: 64 bit Windows drivers
Edited by the Laboratorytalk Editorial
Team on 09 March 2007
Windows Vista 64 bit support for PC
instruments
Spectrum has announced the availability of the new 64 bit Windows drivers (Windows Vista and XP) for its range of more than 70 PCI/PCI-X digitisers, waveform generators and digital I/O cards
The state-of-the-art M2i card series can now be used under the 32 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP and Vista as well as Windows XP and Vista 64 bit The M2i product range consists of digitisers starting with 16 channels, 16 bit resolution and 100kS/s sampling rate up to versions with 12bit resolution and 200MS/s, arbitrary waveform generators (AWG) with up to 125MS/s and digital I/O cards with up to 125MS/s
This article was originally published on Laboratorytalk on 27 Sep 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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The 64 bit versions of Windows have two distinct advantages over the 32 bit versions.
In the first case 64 bit Windows delivers a higher performance for users undertaking computation-intensive tasks like real-time analysis of acquired data or on-the-fly signal generation.
Secondly, the 64 bit Windows versions support clearly more memory than the 32 bit versions.
Further reading
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Based on the recently added docking station product line from US manufacturer Magma Mobility Electronics, the complete test and measurement product line of Spectrum becomes mobile
PC instruments are easier to program
When doing large experiments, in the area of physics research as well as in production tests, there is often the need to acquire a large number of channels simultaneously.
32 bit Windows can address a maximum of 4GByte of memory of which one part is reserved for the kernel and another part as address space for bus extensions.
As a maximum there are 3.5GByte available for application data.
Compared to this, the theoretical available address space of a 64 bit system is 16ExaByte (4GByte * 4GByte).
The physical maximum of memory depends on the motherboard and the Windows version and is usually around 128GByte.
The use of the 64 bit driver version can extremely extend the usable memory of Spectrum digitisers and AWGs without the need of a cost-intensive on-board memory upgrade.
Most of the PC instruments on the market can only use the on-board memory for data storage and need to transfer data after the end of the acquisition to PC.
The Spectrum instruments instead allow the continuous data transfer to PC memory with a transfer speed of up to 220MB/s (PCI-X slot) while doing acquisition.
Assuming a recording of two channels at 100MS/s and 8bit resolution (M2i.2030) a total of 190MByte have to be stored per second.
A Windows 32 bit system is only able to record a maximum of approx 18 seconds even when equipped with full 4GByte of memory.
Compared to this a Windows 64 bit version is able to record several minutes of data.
The 64 bit support of the M2i cards also allows to use older 32 bit programs - thus without the advantage of the extended address space.
The Spectrum 64 bit Windows drivers support the common Spectrum API making card programming identical under Windows 32 bit and 64 bit as well as under Linux 32 bit and 64 bit.
A change from a 32 bit Windows version to its 64 bit pendant therefore is only a question of simple re-compilation. Request a free brochure from Spectrum Systementwicklung Microelectronic ...
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