Patent ID: 7385543

Claim:
A method for asynchronous triggering in a waveform generator, the method comprising: generating a digital to analog converter (DAC) sample clock; receiving a sequencer clock having a frequency of the DAC sample clock divided by an integer number N; shifting a waveform data stream into an output data generator having an integer number I outputs each sequencer clock cycle; multiplexing the I outputs of the output data generator into a single data stream and outputting the data stream to a DAC for conversion to an analog signal; receiving an asynchronous trigger input signal; splitting the asynchronous trigger input signal to generate a number M trigger inputs and delaying each of the trigger inputs after the asynchronous trigger input by: starting with the first of the M trigger inputs, sequentially delaying each trigger input by an integer multiple of the DAC sample clock relative to the previous trigger input; determining a trigger position by detecting the trigger input that is generated at the beginning of a next sequencer clock cycle; and time-shifting the waveform data stream into the I-output data generator to output samples from an output corresponding to the trigger position.