BitFlow Cyton-CXP, Hardware Reference Manual

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The StreamSync Acquisition Engine Introduction
Version A.0 BitFlow, Inc. CYT-2-1
The StreamSync Acquisition Engine
Chapter 2
2.1 Introduction
The StreamSync system consists of an Acquisition Engine and a Buffer Manager. The
StreamSync system was first released on the Cyton-CXP and is a departure from previ-
ous BitFlow frame grabbers. The StreamSync system is a start-from-scratch complete
redesign of the acquisition and DMA parts of a frame grabber. BitFlow used it years of
experience in this area to design a next generation, super efficient capture system.
From a software perspective, the StreamSync system is compatible with the previous
BitFlow products. However, digging deeper, these new system have a lot more power
and flexibility. These new features will be described in the following sections.
The StreamSync system has many improvements over previous systems. The main
improvements are:
Efficient support for variable sized images with fast context switches between
frames
Per frame control of acquisition properties (AOI specifically)
Hardware control of image sequencing
Enhanced debug capabilities
Efficient support for on-demand buffer allocation (Genicam model)
Gracefully recovery from dropped packets (either on the input side or the DMA
side)
This chapter describes the StreamSync Acquisition Engine while the next chapter
describes the StreamSync Buffer Manager.