PGC-1000 Grabber Card Software

The Challenge

PLC2 Design GmbH was developing the PGC-1000, a PCIe-based grabber card designed for high-speed camera data acquisition in automotive testing environments. The card needed to capture data from multiple 10 GbE camera streams simultaneously with near-zero CPU overhead. The development team required specialized software expertise for the Linux driver implementation and a user-friendly control interface.

Our Solution

As part of the PGC-1000 development team, we contributed the software components for the grabber card. We developed a high-performance C driver that handles DMA transfers from the PCIe card, enabling efficient data streaming with minimal CPU involvement. Additionally, we created a Qt-based control application that allows users to configure capture parameters, monitor data streams in real-time, and manage the image conversion pipeline. The software integrates seamlessly with the FPGA-based hardware developed by other team members.

The Result

The PGC-1000 is now a commercially available product that serves as a retrofit solution for existing data logging systems. The software stack we developed enables the card to achieve its full 40 Gbit/s throughput capability while maintaining close to 0% CPU load. The intuitive Qt interface has simplified the setup and operation process for end users in automotive testing facilities.

Our Stack