Impact of processor evolution on synchronous measurements

In the past, data acquisition systems for power quality monitoring required expensive custom-designed hardware and software. With recent advances in standard PC components, this is no longer the case. This paper discusses requirements for modern instrumentation systems, and the effectiveness of standard CPUs and operating systems in fulfilling these requirements. A CPU register and interrupts can be used for sample clock generation and time stamping. Commercially available single-board computers are suitable for ADC front-ends. Modern CPUs include signal processing instructions previously only found in DSPs, and general-purpose operating systems such as Linux provide all the necessary software features.