National Instruments Corporation C-1 AT-MIO/AI E Series User Manual

Common Questions

Appendix
C
This appendix contains a list of commonly asked questions and their
answers relating to usage and special features of your AT E Series
board.

General Information

1. What are the AT E Series boards?
The AT E Series boards are switchless and jumperless, enhanced
MIO boards that use the DAQ-STC for timing.
2. What is the DAQ-STC?
The DAQ-STC is the new system timing control ASIC
(application-specific integrated circuit) designed by National
Instruments and is the backbone of the AT E Series boards. The
DAQ-STC contains seven 24-bit counters and three 16-bit
counters. The counters are divided into three groups:
• Analog input—two 24-bit, two 16-bit counters
• Analog output—three 24-bit, one 16-bit counters
• General-purpose counter/timer functions—two 24-bit counters
The groups can be configured independently with timing
resolutions of 50 ns or 10 µs. With the DAQ-STC, you can
interconnect a wide variety of internal timing signals to other
internal blocks. The interconnection scheme is quite flexible and
completely software configurable. New capabilities such as
buffered pulse generation, equivalent time sampling, and
seamlessly changing the sampling rate are possible.
3. How fast is each AT E Series board?
The last numeral in the name of an AT E Series board specifies the
settling time in microseconds for that particular board. For
example, the AT-MIO-16E-2 has a 2 µs settling time, which
corresponds to a sampling rate of 500 kS/s. These sampling rates
are aggregate: one channel at 500 kS/s or two channels at
250 kS/s per channel illustrates the relationship. Notice, however,