Balluff - BVS CA-GT Technical Documentation
System Requirements

Host System

The BVS CA-GT1 is a high-performance camera containing latest top-notch technology which requires a high data throughput on the host system, for example, when processing large amount of image data and high CPU resources if processing color images on the host system.

For this reason we recommend at least the following components:

ComponentRecommendation
ProcessorIntel Core i7 9th generation or AMD Ryzen 5 4xxx
RAM16 GB Dual Channel RAM (i.e. 2x 8 GB)
MainboardA PCIe slot for the network interface card where the PCIe lanes have to be connected to the processor
BIOSAllows to switch off the energy saving function
Network interface card10 Gb/s with
  • 9KB Jumbo Frames, better 16KB
  • receive side scaling (RSS)

Please ask your system vendor for further advice and consult our technical documentation.

Hardware settings

The network interface card

  • should be connected with the PCIe slot which is connected to the CPU directly (not via bridge), and
  • should be used with in connection with its current device driver.

Using Windows

  • disable energy-saving options, and
  • consider the ultimate performance mode.

Using Linux

  • use the performance governor
echo performance | sudo tee /ss/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

BIOS settings

We recommend following BIOS settings:

ParameterSetting
CPU sleep states (C-states)Disabled
Intel SpeedStep Disabled

Network interface card (NIC)

Several network interface cards have been tested successfully by Balluff.

Network interface card recommendations

So far good results have been achieved with the following NICs:

VendorTypeChipsetJumboframe SupportRemarks
MellanoxMCX4121A-XCAT9.6kB
AsusXG-C100CAquantia AQC10716kB
IOIGE10P-PCIE4XG301Aquantia AQrate16kBPOE+
IOI10DGEAP2X-PCIE8XG302Aquantia AQrate16kBPOE+ / Dual Port

Acceptable results have been achieved with:

VendorTypeChipsetJumboframe SupportRemarks
IntelX540-T2X5409kBDual Port
IntelX550-T2X5509kBDual Port

Network interface card settings

We recommend following network interface card settings:

ParameterSetting
Receive bufferMaximum
Transmitter bufferMaximum
MTUMaximum (the BVS CA-GT1 supports up to 16384 bytes); the network interface card should support at least 9 KB jumbo frames, preferably 16 KB
Interrupt moderationActive
Interrupt moderation rateExtreme / Aggressive
RSSActive
Number of RSS queuesNumber of physical CPU cores (Logical/Hyper-Threading will be ignored. E.g. 8 physical cores and Hyper-Threading = 16 logical CPU cores; for RSS receive queues a value smaller or equal to the number of physical cores should be selected.

For more information about network settings, please have a look at the troubleshooting chapter Optimizing Network Performance .

Supported Operating Systems

The following operating system are supported officially:

Windows

  • Microsoft Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32-bit, 64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 10 (32-bit, 64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows 11

Other Windows versions might work as well but will not be tested on a regular basis.

Linux

The latest version for the required target platform of the Impact Acquire framework can always be found here: https://www.balluff.com/en-de/products/MP18308637.

Currently supported Kernel versions are:

  • Kernel 3.5.x or greater

In case the target system runs an older Linux kernel, it is absolutely necessary to update the kernel to at least version 3.5.0. Please refer to the documentation of your Linux distribution for information on how to update your system's Linux kernel.

All Kernels starting from version 3.5.0 should work without problems.

macOS

The latest version for the required target platform of the Impact Acquire framework can always be found here: https://www.balluff.com/en-de/products/MP18308637.

The currently supported macOS version is 12 (Monterey)