General Information - National Instruments DAQ PCI E Series User Manual

Common Questions

General Information

© National Instruments Corporation
This appendix contains a list of commonly asked questions and their
answers relating to usage and special features of your PCI E Series
board.
What are the PCI E Series boards?
The PCI E Series boards are switchless and jumperless enhanced MIO
boards that use the DAQ-STC for timing.
What is the DAQ-STC?
The DAQ-STC is the system timing control application-specific
integrated circuit (ASIC) designed by National Instruments and is the
backbone of the PCI E Series boards. The DAQ-STC contains seven
24-bit counters and three 16-bit counters. The counters are divided into
the following three groups:
• Analog input—two 24-bit, two 16-bit counters
• Analog output—three 24-bit, one 16-bit counters
• General-purpose counter/timer functions—two 24-bit counters
The groups can be configured independently with timing resolutions of
50 ns or 10 µs. With the DAQ-STC, you can interconnect a wide variety
of internal timing signals to other internal blocks. The interconnection
scheme is quite flexible and completely software configurable. New
capabilities such as buffered pulse generation, equivalent time
sampling, and seamlessly changing the sampling rate are possible.
What does sampling rate mean to me?
It means that this is the fastest you can acquire data on your board and
still achieve accurate results. For example, the PCI-MIO-16XE-50 has
a sampling rate of 20 kS/s. This sampling rate is aggregate: one channel
at 20 kS/s or two channels at 10 kS/s per channel illustrates the
relationship. Notice, however, that some PCI E Series boards have
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Appendix
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PCI E Series User Manual