Over the past decade the machine vision industry has witnessed transformative change in interface standards. For instance, CoaXPress 2.1 (CXP) — the industry’s most powerful interface — can now stream image data from camera to host PC at a previously unattainable 12.5 Gbit/sec per link with the potential of 50 Gbit/sec when a single quad-link camera is connected to a quad-link CXP frame grabber. More gains in throughput are on the horizon as camera manufacturers continue to push bandwidth limits with larger sensors, increasingly higher pixel counts, and faster frame rates.
While this progress has been welcomed by system integrators at the high end, the machine vision landscape can often consist of applications that simply don’t require the blazing speeds of CXP or 25 GigE Vision, and furthermore, can’t justify their expense. These low- to medium-performance use cases include automated inspection processes, science research, medical imaging, and others in a data rate range between 100 MB/sec to 800 MB/sec. Integrators designing these less demanding systems are staying the course with a well-established interface with a robust track record of handling large amounts of data easily and securely: Camera Link.