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What is Gig-E?
GigE, or Gigabit Ethernet, is a particularly fast version of Ethernet which everyone knows and loves. Every one is familiar with Ethernet because it is the ubiquitous means of con-necting a computer to a network. Standard Ethernet has a maximum data rate of 10 mega-bits per second (Mbps) and Fast Ethernet has a maximum data rate of 100 Mbps, but Giga-bit Ethernet is much faster at 1000 Mbps. Standard Ethernet and Fast Ethernet are too slow for streaming uncompressed image data, and way too slow for machine vision cameras.
Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), however, with its maximum data rate of 1000 Mbps, or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) is capable of handling streaming image data and providing reliable transmission of image data from high performance machine vision cameras such as the Gigabit Ethernet cameras from AVT Prosilica and IDS.
What is GigE Vision?
The GigE Vision™ standard from the AIA is an interface standard for high-performance ma-chine vision cameras that is widely supported in the industrial imaging industry. GigE on the other hand, is simply the network structure on which GigE Vision is built. The GigE Vision standard includes both a hardware interface standard (Gigabit Ethernet) and standardized means of communicating with, and controlling, a camera.
The GigE Vision camera control registers are based on a command structure called GenICam which is administered through the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA). GenICam seeks to establish a common camera control interface so that third party software can communicate with cameras from various manufacturers without customization.
GenICam is incorporated as part of the GigE Vision standard, so any truly GigE Vision-compliant camera also complies with GenICam. GigE Vision is analogous to Firewire's DCAM (IIDC) and has great value for reducing system integration costs and for improving ease of use.
GigE
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