The proven high-speed M3i platform of Spectrum now has been expanded by extremely high precision digitizers offering 16 bit resolution at sampling speeds between 65 MS/s and 180 MS/s. In total six different models with one or two channels are available, each model can be selected to have PCI/PCI-X interface as well as PCI Express interface. The M3i.48xx series is suitable for a large range of application areas especially high energy physics, research and development, radar, spectroscopy and laser applications.

The highly configurable A/D amplifier stage can be software programmed to 50 Ohm or 1 MOhm termination, AC or DC coupling, high bandwidth of more than 90 MHz or low noise bandwidth filter as well as six different input ranges between ±200mV and ±10V. The input stage can be on-board calibrated by just issuing a calibration command in software. Calibration values are stored in an on-board EEProm.
128 MSamples of memory are standard on the card and can be equipped with up to 2 GSamples of on-board memory to cope with the large amounts of data. Using the full memory option it is possible to acquire more than 10 seconds of data with one channel 180 MS/s. By choosing either the PCI 33/66 MHz (PCI-X) or PCI Express interface model, continuous data can be streamed to PC RAM, its potential capacity now greatly extended in the new 64 bit Windows and Linux environments.
A very fast FIFO data interface (up to 245 MByte/s) in combination with the Multiple Recording option and the complete on-board memory used as a FIFO buffer makes it possible to acquire data segments on every trigger event for hours. The option Multiple Recording can be programmed with pre- and posttrigger, an extended trigger delay and a wide combination of trigger modes to cover nearly all application requirements that may occur. Multiple Recording may be combined with the timestamp option that will stamp each trigger event in relation to the internal clock base or even an external time signal.
The M3i.48xx is delivered with Windows drivers supporting Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, each 32 bit and 64 bit version as well as Linux 32/64 bit drivers, a set of programming examples and a basic version of the new SBench 6 software. SBench 6 is a powerful newly designed state-of-the-art digitizer software, that supports all software programmable features of the hardware. SBench 6 has been optimized for handling GBytes of acquired data and is available for Windows and Linux with KDE and Gnome.