Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, Milano 20133, Italy.
Dipartimento di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi di Messina, Messina 98166, Italy.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2021 Sep 1;92(9):091501. doi: 10.1063/5.0050999.
Microcontrollers and field-programmable gate arrays have been largely leveraged in scientific instrumentation since decades. Recent advancements in the performance of these programmable digital devices, with hundreds of I/O pins, up to millions of logic cells, >10 Gb/s connectivity, and hundreds of MHz multiple clocks, have been accelerating this trend, extending the range of functions. The diversification of devices from very low-cost 8-bit microcontrollers up to 32-bit ARM-based ones and a system of chip combining programmable logic with processors make them ubiquitous in modern electronic systems, addressing diverse challenges from ultra-low power operation, with sub-µA quiescent current in sleep mode for portable and Internet of Things applications, to high-performance computing, such as in machine vision. In this Review, the main motivations (compactness, re-configurability, parallelization, low latency for sub-ns timing, and real-time control), the possible approaches of the adoption of embedded devices, and the achievable performances are discussed. Relevant examples of applications in opto-electronics, physics experiments, impedance, vibration, and temperature sensing from the recent literature are also reviewed. From this bird-eye view, key paradigms emerge, such as the blurring of boundaries between digital platforms and the pervasiveness of machine learning algorithms, significantly fostered by the possibility to be run in embedded devices for distributing intelligence in the environment.
微控制器和现场可编程门阵列自几十年前以来就在科学仪器中得到了广泛应用。这些可编程数字设备的性能近年来取得了重大进展，具有数百个 I/O 引脚、数百万个逻辑单元、>10 Gb/s 的连接速度和数百兆赫兹的多个时钟，这一趋势正在加速，扩展了功能范围。从非常低成本的 8 位微控制器到 32 位基于 ARM 的微控制器，以及将可编程逻辑与处理器结合在一起的系统芯片的设备多样化，使得它们在现代电子系统中无处不在，解决了从超低功耗操作到高性能计算等各种挑战，例如在机器视觉中的应用。在这篇综述中，讨论了采用嵌入式设备的主要动机（紧凑性、可重构性、并行性、亚纳秒定时的低延迟和实时控制）、可能的采用方法以及可实现的性能。还回顾了最近文献中光电、物理实验、阻抗、振动和温度感应等应用的相关示例。从这个鸟瞰图中，可以出现关键的范例，例如数字平台之间的界限变得模糊，以及机器学习算法的普及，这主要得益于在嵌入式设备中运行的可能性，从而在环境中分布智能。
