Dataforth Tech Note:
Data Acquisition System Throughput


December 2018, MARIETTA, GA ~

"Hello, that looks like an interesting data acquisition system! How fast is it and how much does it cost?" Apparently, simple questions that unfortunately, require complex answers! Yes, there are no simple answers to how fast and how much!

Applications become immediately complex when we combine analog and digital (discrete) channels in any specific quantity not given on the manufacturers spec sheet! Moreover, we usually wish to service some channels more often than others. In addition, we would like to poll (or interrogate) the channels over a network!

So, number of readings (or writings for outputs) per channel per second (system throughput) depends on how many channels, analog and discrete, how the channels are grouped for more efficient reads and writes, and on what type of network – ethernet, serial, or proprietary. Equally perplexing is the question of cost. Of course, channel count effects the cost of the system as does the type or complexity of the desired network connection.

Most suppliers of industrial data acquisition products are sympathetic to questions of speed and cost. They normally provide you with a ...

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