[Mep-dev] MEP FPGA development station

[Bob McGwier]

I will approach Chris Dick about loaning us another development board. 
Chris is chief scientist at Xilinx.  fred harris has worked with him for 
years and fred and I have done Xilinx projects with help from Chris. 
fred and I are working on our twelth paper together right now.  We are 
delivering two conference papers at Crowncom and Chris Dick and fred are 
doing a third.  Chris owes us big time but no one more than fred who has 
done so much free engineering for Xilinx in return for free and early 
access and support of his students, that we probably should take 
advantage of this.   I have asked fred and Chris for creative thinking 
on getting us appropriate materials.  ;-).  Chris is already providing 
the hardware for the Allen Telescope and fred and I have done lots of 
the design work for the correlator, channelizer, and more to be built 
for there.  Chris and I sat together at the dedication of the Allen 
telescope as fred could not attend (Mr. Galavant if ever there was one). 
  Right now is when I truly am saddened about the untimely death of Jef 
Mock, one of the best FPGA programmers who ever lived, programmer of 
large FPGA arrays for every major radio astronomy telescope supported by 
NSF.  He was a ham and would have done this kind of coding at our 
request in a heartbeat. Sigh....

My thinking is:  I think the Spartan-5 or 6 family, married to the OMAP, 
is probably a better fit in terms of cost, power, etc.  Not that 
Balister is loaded with free time, but he has already married the OMAP 
to an FPGA processor and the USRP family.  That should be considered a 
"quick way" to get started.

As always, the problem with FPGA programming is the need to develop code 
and the tough decisions that come with deciding buy or write cores. 
"Their" cores are proprietary, closed,  and more.  USRP is all open 
source, and the code for it is open source and will do a lot of what we 
are about.  USRP2 uses a Spartan 5.


Bob
N4HY

On 3/7/2010 11:34 PM, Michelle wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I'd like to pay some attention to and invest some time in developing code that will define an FPGA for our modem. I'm reasonably confident that an ARM (like in the Beagleboard) is a good choice of processor, but we'll still need a modem, and it's not going to code itself.  :+)
>
> So, the good news: I was able to get a long-term loan of an FPGA development kit that will serve at least as a starting point and at best a complete development station.
>
> Here's a summary writeup on the Xtreme DSP development kit from Xilinx that we've been given to use on MEP:
>
> http://www.design-reuse.com/news/3144/xilinx-nallatech-ship-xtremedsp-development-kit-fpgas.html
>
> Xilinx 2V2000 Virtex-II FPGAs are the target device. Virtex II are an older version of Xilinx's high-performance Virtex line, which are now at version 4, 5, and 6.
>
> However, with conversion tools, newer FPGAs can be targeted with any code developed for the VirtexII. This kit was free - it's a long-term loan from Qualcomm for the project.
>
> Here's a datasheet for the Virtex II family. Ours is the 2V2000.
>
> http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/data_sheets/ds031.pdf
>
> Here's a User's Guide for the Virtex II FPGA family:
>
> http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/user_guides/ug002.pdf
>
> We were able to set the station up for local and remote development, so your bit file can be loaded remotely, if you would like to participate. And, I hope each of you will consider participating! If you've always wanted to learn how to make an FPGA, then this is a great opportunity. If you know your way around programmable logic, then we would appreciate your help, advice, and critique/review of work produced.
>
> If you have an idea for the modem, or would like to work on another programmable logic project for MEP, then you are more than welcome to use the station. I'm happy to help coordinate.
>
> If you have a lead on another FPGA development station that might be available for work on MEP, please let me know - while we can get a lot done with one, the more stations available, the better.
>
> More soon,
> -Michelle W5NYV
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>


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