Analog Input Data Acquisition Methods; Software-Timed Acquisitions; Hardware-Timed Acquisitions; Buffered - National Instruments NI 6221 User Manual

Analog Input Data Acquisition Methods

Software-Timed Acquisitions

Hardware-Timed Acquisitions

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switches between channels much less often and is affected much less by
settling time.
When performing analog input measurements, you either can perform
software-timed or hardware-timed acquisitions. Hardware-timed
acquisitions can be buffered or non-buffered.
With a software-timed acquisition, software controls the rate of the
acquisition. Software sends a separate command to the hardware to initiate
each ADC conversion. In NI-DAQmx, software-timed acquisitions are
referred to as having on-demand timing. Software-timed acquisitions are
also referred to as immediate or static acquisitions and are typically used
for reading a single sample of data.
With hardware-timed acquisitions, a digital hardware signal
(ai/SampleClock) controls the rate of the acquisition. This signal can be
generated internally on your device or provided externally.
Hardware-timed acquisitions have several advantages over software-timed
acquisitions.
• The time between samples can be much shorter.
• The timing between samples is deterministic.
• Hardware-timed acquisitions can use hardware triggering.
Hardware-timed operations can be buffered or non-buffered. A buffer is a
temporary storage in computer memory for to-be-generated samples.

Buffered

In a buffered acquisition, data is moved from the DAQ device's onboard
FIFO memory to a PC buffer using DMA or interrupts before it is
transferred to application memory. Buffered acquisitions typically allow
for much faster transfer rates than non-buffered acquisitions because data
is moved in large blocks, rather than one point at a time.
One property of buffered I/O operations is the sample mode. The sample
mode can be either finite or continuous.
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Chapter 4 Analog Input
M Series User Manual