DAQ card with 16 Analog I/O and working at 40MHz

[kashyap89]

For making automated chip testing, I am looking for measuring voltages at pins which are toggling at 40MHz and can range between 0 to 14V. Is there a DAQ card that can satisfy my requirements. I am not looking too much into the accuracy. I could find very little in the search box. Thanks, Prasad

[NI-Bongo]

Hello Prasad,

Acquiring analog signals at 40MHz can be difficult.  The only analog DAQ device we have that can get near that rate is this S Series Device:

NI PXI-5105
http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/203227

This will still alias a 40MHz signal at the maximum sampling rate.

You may want to look at our digitizers, which are typically lower channel count, but can achieve the necessary rates.

High-Speed Digitizers/Oscilloscopes
http://www.ni.com/digitizers/highspeed/

Also, if the outputs are digital and you are only concerned with the 14 V, you may want to use an external voltage divider and use a high-speed digital device:

High-Speed Digital I/O Devices
http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/13498

These options are the closest I've found to doing what you'd like to do.  I hope this is informative.

[NI-Bongo]

Hi again Prasad,

Thinking about it more, the digitizers are probably the best way to go, especially if you are looking to analyze rise and fall times of your device.  Let me know if you'd like to speak with someone about your options.

[kashyap89]

Hi John, Thanks for your informative suggestions. I also looked into PCI-5105, but still had doubts about its use in measuring analog voltage levels. Let me give you a brief history. Ours is a driver chip with 6 channels. We need to measure/capture output at 4 channels and compare the rise/fall and propagation delay between these channels. All are analog output with levels ranging from -7V to +7V in the maximum case. I would be fine with a lower channel count, but would really like to measure outputs at 40MHz which is the max. frequency spec on our chip. I don't have much idea of what a digitizer is and how it is different from a DAQ card. If you could mention this in your mail or guide me to a tutorial, that would be great. Yes, we are very much interested to talk to NI and also buy a PXI system for the company real soon. The goal is to automate the test and measure procedures esp. tr/tf/tpd which could be very time consuming. I talked to a NI rep. here in Bangalore, India (I work for Intersil Design Center at Bangalore-India). I have setup a meeting with an Engineer names Siddharath on Monday, meanwhile your inputs will help me a lot in deciding the right instrument for our lab. Thanks a lot! Prasad

[NI-Bongo]

Hi Prasad,

A digitizer is more like a programmable  oscilloscope than a DAQ card.  They are useful in situations like yours where a high sampling rate is required, but they have lower channel counts in order to achieve these rates because so much more onboard memory is required to buffer the acquisition. 

Here is an article I would recommend reading:

Top 10 Things to Consider When Selecting a Digitizer/Oscilloscope
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/4333

And this is a good tutorial on digitizers:

Digitizer/Oscilloscope Fundamentals
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3408

This is a 9 minute demo of one of our high-speed digitizers:

PXI 5152 Online Demonstration
http://digital.ni.com/demo.nsf/websearch/BEB2DA0A5877EE62862571BE007742FB?OpenDocument&node=203015_US

The article, tuturial, demo, and other product information can be found here:

High-Speed Digitizers/Oscilloscopes
http://www.ni.com/digitizers/highspeed/

I hope this material is helpful and your meeting with Siddharath leads you to a great automated test solution for your application.