Teledyne SP Devices Introduces High Speed Disk Streaming with ADQ35 and Libads for Extreme Data Capture

Why It Matters

The technology removes storage bottlenecks, enabling deterministic, ultra‑fast data capture essential for radar, satellite monitoring, and scientific instrumentation, thereby expanding the operational envelope of high‑performance measurement systems.

Key Takeaways

• ADQ35 delivers up to 10 GSPS, 20 GB/s raw data.
• libads writes directly to NVMe, bypassing OS latency.
• Sustained >25 GB/s achievable with enterprise RAID configurations.
• PCIe Gen4/5 x16 slots required for optimal throughput.
• Low CPU overhead enables real‑time GPU processing.

Pulse Analysis

The demand for real‑time, high‑fidelity data streams has outpaced traditional storage architectures, which often rely on file‑system buffering that introduces latency and jitter. By integrating a direct‑write NVMe library, Teledyne SP Devices sidesteps these constraints, offering a deterministic path from digitizer to disk. This approach mirrors trends in high‑frequency trading and autonomous vehicle sensor suites, where every microsecond of data integrity counts, and it positions the ADQ35‑libads combo as a benchmark for next‑generation acquisition platforms.

At the heart of the solution is the ADQ35, a 10‑gigahertz‑sample‑per‑second digitizer that pushes 20 gigabytes per second of raw waveform data through a PCIe Gen3 interface. libads aggregates this stream into large, contiguous blocks and deposits them directly onto NVMe SSDs, eliminating OS‑level overhead. When paired with a RAID array of enterprise‑grade drives—such as five Kioxia CD8 units—the system consistently exceeds 25 GB/s, while a more modest dual‑consumer‑SSD setup still delivers high burst rates for budget‑constrained projects. Proper PCIe lane allocation, bifurcation, and thermal management are critical to sustaining these figures.

For sectors ranging from defense radar to space‑based observation and high‑energy physics, the ability to capture uninterrupted, petabyte‑scale datasets transforms analysis pipelines. Researchers can now run GPU‑accelerated algorithms in near‑real time without sacrificing storage performance, accelerating discovery cycles. As data volumes continue to swell, solutions like Teledyne’s high‑speed streaming architecture will become indispensable, setting a new standard for deterministic, low‑overhead acquisition in the era of big data instrumentation.