Patent ID: 8458371

Claim:
A modular data acquisition system, comprising: a plurality of peripheral devices, wherein the plurality of peripheral devices are configurable by a host central processing unit (CPU) to implement a processing chain for acquiring, processing, or generating data, wherein after being configured by the host processor, the processing chain is configured to acquire, process, or generate data in a streaming manner without passing the data through a processor or a memory of the host central processing unit of the modular data acquisition system; wherein the plurality of peripheral devices comprise: a first peripheral device comprising a data acquisition module, the first peripheral device comprising: an external data input, wherein the first peripheral device is configured to receive measurement data via the external data input; and a peripheral device output configured to couple to a system interconnect of the modular data acquisition system; and a second peripheral device of the modular data acquisition system, configured to couple to the first peripheral device via the system interconnect, wherein the second peripheral device comprises a data processing module; wherein the first peripheral device is configured to transfer at least a portion of the measurement data to the second peripheral device of the modular data acquisition system via the system interconnect in the streaming manner, and wherein the second peripheral device is configured to process at least a portion of the measurement data transferred to the second peripheral device in the streaming manner.