Spectrum Instrumentation M5i.3321-x16 digitiser

Spectrum Instrumentation’s first digitisers to use the full 16-lane PCIe interface (Gen 3) can stream acquired data over the bus at an ultrafast rate of 12.8 GBps. Now the company has released a more basic variant, designed for dual-channel applications.

The model M5i.3321-x16 features the same streaming speed and matches it with synchronous 3.2 GS/s, 12-bit sampling on each channel. This means no data needs to be lost, even when the card is acquiring data with both channels running at their maximum sampling rate. The ultrafast bus allows all the data to be transferred directly to PC memory for storage, or even to CUDA-based GPUs for processing and analysis.

The product is designed to handle a wide variety of signals. Its fast sampling rate and high resolution are supported by fully functional front-end electronics with 1 GHz bandwidth, programmable full-scale ranges from ±200 mV to ±2.5 V and variable offset. To allow the capture of long and complex waveforms, there are 4 GB (2 GS) of onboard memory, which can be optioned up to 16 GB (8 GS) if necessary.

The onboard memory can operate as a ring buffer, like a transient recorder, or as a FIFO buffer, for streaming the acquired data directly over the bus. It can also be partitioned into segments for recording multiple events, even when they happen with fast trigger rates. The 12-bit resolution meanwhile offers good dynamic range, allowing users to capture small signals that may ride on larger ones and revealing the fine signal details that are often missed.

Installing the card into a PC turns it into a powerful test instrument that can be used to acquire and analyse signals in a variety of applications. It is suitable for capturing the fast signals found in fibre optics, mass spectrometry, semiconductor testing, RF recording, AI, radar, LIDAR, communications, astronomy and quantum technology.