What are the different ADC architectures and their applications?

ADC architectures: Flash (parallel comparators, very fast but low resolution, video and RF). Successive Approximation (SAR - binary search, good balance of speed/resolution, general purpose). Sigma-Delta (oversampling with noise shaping, high resolution, precision measurement). Pipelined (stages of flash converters, high speed and resolution, instrumentation). Dual-slope integrating (very accurate, slow, DMMs). Selection factors: resolution (bits), sampling rate, power consumption, and cost. Process instrumentation typically uses sigma-delta for precision or SAR for faster multi-channel applications.