Between intense bursts of high-speed device operation and data movement activity, the processor on a Data Acquisition Processor board sits almost idle. Imagine the processing power of a desktop computer
— without disk drives to manage,
— without keyboards or displays,
— without pointing devices,
— without a bulky desktop OS.
Imagine this reserve of processing power dedicated to your processing requirements.
Most applications will find that the kinds of processing functions they need performed by the Data Acquisition Processor are already programmed and ready. Adding a processing task for the Data Acquisition Processor means adding one line to the DAPL configuration, and the programming is done. There are over 100 pre-defined processing commands to choose from.
Do you need this?
For applications with many data channels, continuous processing, and demanding pre-processing requirements, you really do need this. You need all the processing power you can get. Numerically-intensive pre-processing can be completed in parallel with acquisition and host processing, so that the intensive pre-processing is already done when your host receives its data.
The possibilities are endless, but consider these:
Effective anti-aliasing. Well-known anti-aliasing techniques combine simple hardware filters with decimating digital filters. Onboard digital filters are a great way to implement these techniques.
Concurrent numerical pre-processing. Apply modulation, filtering, or transform analysis at real-time rates for frequency selection, feature detection, or noise reduction.
Selecting data content. Retain all data of relevance, discarding the rest.
Collecting process statistics. Monitor your process without interfering with other data acquisition and processing.
Processing extensions
The Developer's Toolkit for DAPL makes DAPL system services available for fully customized processing. Processes can be optimized for extreme efficiency, for responsive feedback control, or for intelligent data-on-demand.
