The new serial, peer-to-peer, PCI Express is the bus of the future for high speed data. The R64e-CL will help you move your application into that future.
The R64e-CL
The new R64e-CL takes high-speed imaging to the next level by offering a solution for PCI Express. PCI Express offers not only incredible bandwidth, but also significantly more robust continuous data throughput. The R64e-CL product line follows the tradition of its predecessors by supporting image acquisition at today's camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Combining the built-in flexibility to support hundreds of off-the-shelf and proprietary cameras with the simplicity of a Camera Link interface, the R64e-CL offers the best camera interface solution for the most demanding OEM, System Integrator or End-User applications.
The R64e-CL features a single or dual Camera Link camera interface configuration. In the single camera configuration, the R64e-CL is capable of supporting a base, medium or full Camera Link camera. Output configurations include two taps, three taps (RGB), four taps and eight taps. The dual camera configuration R64e-CL is capable of supporting two identical base Camera Link cameras.
Features
FlowThru Architecture
For the last 10 years, BitFlow's camera interface products have been built around our revolutionary FlowThru architecture. Comprised of a user-programmable Video Pipeline, a flexible Camera Control Unit, efficient high-speed video FIFOs and a highly-optimized scatter/gather DMA engine, the FlowThru architecture allows the R64e-CL to control, acquire, reformat and transfer video data directly into the user's application at camera speeds with zero latency or CPU usage. Our FlowThru architecture has been continuously optimized and enhanced to support a wide variety of imaging applications such as document/package processing, semiconductor, continuous web inspection, sequence capture and motion analysis and can easily be adapted to the specific needs of your application.
PCI Express Interface
The R64e-CL uses a x8 PCI Express bus interface. The PCI Express bus offers huge increases in DMA performance over the PCI bus. However, what is less well known is that the PCI Express bus is always peer to peer. This means the the R64e-CL does not share the bus with any other devices. In most motherboard architectures, it will talk directly to the PCI chipset that is on the memory bus. This direct connection equates to higher sustained DMA bandwidths regardless of system load. Also, most motherboards support concurrent full DMA speed on all of their PCI Express slots. The board will work in any slot that it fits in. This means not only x16 and x8 slots, but also, as is becoming the trend, x4 and x1 slots that use x16 connectors. Performance will be degraded in x1 and x4 slots, but the board will work fine in applications that don't require maximum data rate.
Real-Time Bayer Processor
BitFlow's R64-PCE-CL-IP2 model features real-time Bayer filter interpolation for the latest color Camera Link cameras and allows the user to maintain the camera's specified frame rate while also offloading the host CPU. BitFlow's BayView application, which is offered as part of our Software Development Kit, offers full control over all processing parameters as well as a live preview window.
Camera Control and I/O
Supported by a GUI camera file editing utility (CamEd), the R64-CL's Camera Control Unit (CCU) provides full support for monochrome or color area and line scan cameras and their operating modes. The CCU can acquire fixed or variable size frames (up to 256K x 128K) and lines (up to 256K x unlimited lines in continuous acquisition mode, 256K x 128K in triggered acquisition mode) and features a programmable AOI (Area Of Interest) sub-windowing capability. Camera control signals such as exposure and asynchronous reset can be customized to the camera's capabilities. Programmable TTL, differential and opto-coupled I/O signals such as trigger, encoder (with on-board rate control capability), general purpose inputs and general purpose outputs provide flexibility when interfacing to system control equipment and ensure trigger to image accuracy. The R64e-CL board, as with our past interface products, is capable of supporting not only simple triggering modes but also extremely complicated, application-specific modes as well.
Applications
The flexibility of the R64e-CL product allows it to be used in virtually any imaging application that requires a Camera Link camera and utilizes the power, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the desktop computer for processing.
R64e Models
R64-PCE-CL-D
R64-PCE-CL-F
R64-PCE-CL-IP2D
R64-PCE-CL-IP2F