Frame grabber boards (not optics, but they decide whether you can capture at all)

Whereas optics decides "whether the image is formed with the required contrast", the frame grabber decides whether it can be carried without being dropped. At high resolution, high speed and with line scan, it is common for the bottleneck to be the transmission bandwidth rather than the sensor.

Interface bandwidth (values checked against primary sources)

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Opt-C:Link (proprietary to AVAL DATA) | 6.25 Gbps/ch, 12.5 Gbps with 2 ch bundled | Optical fibre (core 50 / 62.5 µm, cladding 125 µm) | Extendable to several hundred m, robust against noise. With 5 packet types (image, serial, trigger, link and user), even control is carried over light. Camera Link cameras connect through a conversion unit (AOC-162 etc.) |

The design is such that 16k × 300 kHz × 8 bit ≈ 4.9 GB/s fits exactly into the 5 GB/s of CXP-12 ×4. The Vieworks VT series (TDI, up to 300 kHz) is a product that presupposes this bandwidth.

Main makers and current boards

| Maker | Product | Specifications checked |

| --- | --- | --- |

| Euresys | Coaxlink Quad CXP-12 | PCIe 3.0 x8, camera bandwidth 5000 MB/s, CXP-12 ×4 |

| Euresys | Coaxlink Quad CXP-12 JPEG | 4 independent channels + baseline JPEG encoder 250 Mpixel/s (compression on the board) |

| Euresys | Coaxlink QSFP+ / Duo / Mono LH | Configurable for 1 to 8 cameras, across the range CXP-6 to CXP-12 |

| Matrox | Rapixo CXP (RAP8G4C12P602) | CoaXPress 2.0, CXP-12 ×4, PCIe 3.1 x8, 12.5 GB/s camera bandwidth, PoCXP |

| Teledyne DALSA | Xtium2-CXP PX8 Quad | CXP-12 ×4, camera bandwidth 5000 MB/s, PCIe Gen3 x8 (bus up to 7000 MB/s) |

| BitFlow | Claxon / Cyton | CXP / Camera Link |

| Active Silicon | FireBird | CXP / Camera Link |

| Kaya Instruments | Komodo | CXP |

| AVAL DATA | APX-3312A / APX-3313A (Camera Link), Opt-C:Link family | Has both Camera Link boards and a proprietary optical I/F. Strong for equipment in the Japanese domestic market |

| Euresys | Grablink (Camera Link) | Continues Camera Link as a line separate from the CXP-based Coaxlink |

Why it cannot be ignored in virtualization

0. If long distance is needed, the options narrow. Camera Link tops out at around 10 m, but Opt-C:Link (optical) reaches several hundred m. On sites where the equipment is large or electrical noise is high (welding, near motor drives), the standard is decided by distance and noise immunity before bandwidth.

1. In area scan the sensor is usually the bottleneck. The IMX541 (20.3 MP, 8 bit) is 20.3 MB per 1 frame, so at 5 GB/s it could theoretically reach 246 fps, but the sensor itself runs at 18 to 42 fps. → Bandwidth is left over.

2. In line scan / TDI the bandwidth becomes the bottleneck. 16k × 300 kHz uses up 4.9 GB/s. If you want a higher line rate, it first becomes a question of the board and the number of cables.

3. Encoder synchronization (line scan only). Synchronizing the transport speed with the line rate is the grabber's job, and if this slips, the aspect ratio of the image breaks. This failure mode does not exist in area scan, and no amount of tuning the optics fixes it.

4. Pre-processing on the board. Doing shading correction, bit packing and JPEG compression on the board lowers the host load. When deploying a model trained on synthetic data, this correction sits in front of inference, so you need to decide beforehand whether to pass the training data through the same correction or to train on the raw data before correction.

5. Trigger jitter. When synchronizing with pulsed lighting or a strobe, jitter becomes exposure variation = brightness variation. This is where the domain-randomization intensity_jitter properly finds its grounds.

Connection to the implementation

optscene.interface_budget() returns the bandwidth-limited maximum frame rate / line rate from the sensor's pixel count, bit depth and interface. It is an op for finding out first "which one is the bottleneck" by checking it against the sensor-side upper limit.