A data-acquisition card without dead time

The knowledge of the ion beam profile in a storage ring is vital and it is measured by a position-sensitive detector. Co-ordinates of hit locations on the anodes of two multi-channel plate (MCP) detectors (one in horizontal and the other in vertical direction) are collected. Task sharing between software and hardware, including dual-buffer memory-management as implemented in the data-acquisition card described here, eliminates acquisition dead time.