Pulsar observations at the Effelsberg 100m Telescope is facilitated by three FPGA based instruments - the ROACH1, ROACH2 and the PFFTS. The ROACH systems have programmable FPGAs that implement either packetised baseband generators or pulsar search mode data generators (all 4 Stokes). Subsequently, in timing mode CPU/GPU nodes process the baseband data to generate averaged coherently dedispersed pulse profiles. If required, the CPU/GPU nodes can optionally capture and store the baseband or pulsar search mode data. The PFFTS is also based on a FPGA, but implement a fixed 512-channel search mode design, writing out data at 51.2us time resolution. The PFFTS is hardwired to the 7-Beam frontend.

The wide variety of receivers and bandwidths means that not all data products are possible for all receivers. For instance with the L-Band receiver, one can enable only timing and baseband modes. On the other hand when observing with he 7-Beam receiver, once can choose timing, baseband and search mode data with he PFFTS.

PSRIX system is based on ROACH1 hardware, and PSRIX2 the ROACH2 equipped with the 5GSPS ADCs.