Spectrum M2p.59 Series, Руководство по оборудованию, Страница: 16 / 190

16 (c) Spectrum Instrumentation GmbH
Additional options Introduction
Star-Hub
The star hub module allows the
synchronization of either up to six or up to
sixteen M2p cards. It is even possible to
synchronize cards of different families of
M2p series cards with each other.
Two different mechanical versions of the
star-hub module allowing the synchroniza -
tion of up to 16 cards are available.
A version that is mounted on top of the car -
rier card as a piggy-back module (option
SH6tm or SH16tm) extending the width of
the card to two slots.
The second version (option SH6ex or
SH16ex) is mounted behind the card and
extends the M2p base card to a 3/4
length PCI Express card. Therefore it re -
quires the availability of a 3/4 length slot
in the system but does not need the width
of an additional slot.
The module acts as a star hub for clock
and trigger signals. Each board is con -
nected with a small cable of the same length, even the master board. That minimizes the clock skew between the different cards. The picture
shows the extension module mounted on the base board schematically without any cables to achieve a better visibility.
The carrier card acts as the clock master and the same or any other card can be the trigger master. All trigger modes that are available on
a single card are also available if the synchronization star-hub is used.
The cable connection of the boards is automatically recognized and checked by the driver when initializing the star-hub module. So no care
must be taken on how to cable the cards. The star-hub module itself is handled as an additional device just like any other card and the pro -
gramming consists of only a few additional commands.
Image 8: M2p card with installed star-hub 16 in the extension version