National Instruments Corporation

Gerardo Daniel Domene-Ramirez

Hector M Rubio

Rafael Castro Scorsi

A system may include a data acquisition hardware device (DAQ) for acquiring sample data and/or generating control signals, and a host system with memory that may store data samples and information associated with the DAQ and host system operations. The DAQ may push hardware status information to host memory, triggered by predetermined events taking place in the DAQ, e.g. timing events or interrupts. The DAQ may update dedicated buffers in host memory with status data for any of these events. The pushed status information may be read in a manner that allows detection of race conditions, and may be used to handle data acquisition, output control signaling, and interrupts as required without the host system having to query the DAQ. The DAQ may also detect data timing errors and report those data timing errors back to the host system, and also provide improved output operations using counters.

Methods for data acquisition systems in real time applications

A system may include a processing unit executing program instructions (SW), a data acquisition (DAQ) hardware device for acquiring sample data and/or generating control signals, and host memory configured to store data samples and various data associated with the DAQ and processor operations. The DAQ device may push HW status information to host memory upon being triggered by predetermined events taking place in the DAQ device, e.g. timing events or interrupts, to avoid or reduce SW reads to the DAQ device. The DAQ device may update dedicated buffers in host memory with status data on any of these events. The status information pushed to memory may be read in a manner that allows detection of race conditions. Interrupts generated by the DAQ device may be similarly handled. Upon generating an interrupt, the DAQ device may gather information required to handle the interrupt, and push the information into system memory, along with information identifying the interrupt. SW may read system memory for this information, and handle the interrupts as required without having to query the DAQ device.

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Gerardo Daniel Domene-Ramirez