A Survey of Scalable Real-Time Architectures for Data Acquisition Systems

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, NevadaToday’s large-scale signal processing systems impose massive bandwidth requirements on both internal and external communication systems. Most often, these bandwidth requirements are met by scalable input/output architectures built around high-performance, standards-based technology. Several such technologies are available and are in common use as internal and/or external communication mechanisms. This paper provides an overview of some of the more common scalable technologies used for internal and external communications in real-time data acquisition systems. With respect to internal communications mechanisms this paper focuses on three ANSI-standard switched fabric technologies: RACEway (ANSI/VITA 5-1994), SKYchannel (ANSI/VITA 10-1995) and Myrinet (ANSI/VITA 26-1998). The discussion then turns to how Fibre Channel, HiPPI, and ATM are used to provide scalable external communications in real-time systems. Finally, glimpse of how these technologies are evolving to meet tomorrow’s requirements is provided.International Foundation for TelemeteringProceedings from the International Telemetering Conference are made available by the International Foundation for Telemetering and the University of Arizona Libraries. Visit http://www.telemetry.org/index.php/contact-us if you have questions about items in this collection