Re: TigerSHARC to PC Interface
- From: "Ron Huizen" <rhuizen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 09:54:51 -0500
"Dan" <dan.casimiro@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1138794235.848951.19610@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,
I am a graduate student at Brown University. We are currently working
on a project that integrates five standalone TS201S Ez-Kits. My
advisor would like record data by connecting the entire system to a PC.
The data rate is on the order of 164 Mbps. Thus far, I have
So you want approximately 20 MBytes/second, right? And continuously or just
a large snapshot that fits into the PC's memory? If you need continuous and
assume it'll go on the hard disk, have you verified that your PC can
actually record at this rate? How long do you need to record, assuming this
is continuous. Our "expensive" boards ;-) have no problem writing data into
the PC's memory at rates much higher than this (on some PCs we have measured
over 400 MBytes/second, on PCs with 32 bit 33 MHz PCI buses we get better
than 100 MBytes/second) however we have had customers who then have issues
figuring out how to make a standard Wintel PC get this onto a disk or even
copy it to another memory loaction, in anywhere near these rates. So you
may want to do some independant testing of your PC environment in terms of
dealing with this 20 MBytes/sec of data before you go too far down the path
of figuring out how to get into the PC from the DSPs. I'm not saying you
can't do it, I'm just saying it may not be trivial.
identified three plausible solutions. All three utilize the Link Port
for inter-processor communication.
When you say interprocessor do you mean DSP to DSP or DSP to PC or both?
1.) Couple a Xilinx FPGA with xapp634/635 and an USB 2.0 chip.
OK, but why USB instead of PCI? If I recall, USB 2.0 is 400 MBits/sec
theoretical, right? And you need 164 Mbps sustained? May be possible, but
I don't have much experience on what actual data rates are achieved with USB
2.0, and of course this would include the drivers on the PC. You could try
a PC to PC transfer over USB 2.0 to measure this.
2.) Interface an USB 2.0 chip to yet another TS201S Ez-Kit.
And how would you do that?
3.) Use the SHARCfin ASIC from Bittware with a TS201S to implement a
PCI card.
I don't mean to be blunt, but if you can't afford one of our standard PCI
boards, you can't afford our SharcFIN. It's not intended for low volume
designs, and the pricing models reflect this, i.e. its going to cost more
than buying one of our standard boards. Besides, even though this is
university (so I assume you consider time and labour are free) there are
real out of pocket costs associated with designing your own board. And you
really want to spend the time and effort to build your own custom PCI board?
Or USB 2.0 board, for that matter? Or is that part of the goal of the
project?
Have I overlooked any other viable solutions (not more than $1000) to
this problem? My advisor seems conviced that there should exist a
You may want to look to see what cheap FPGA boards are available. I'd look
for one with a PCI interface built-in, and that could support putting the
TigerSharc link port in it to cable up to the EzKits. You probably want to
look at Xilinx or Altera directly, as their equivalent of EzKits should be
subsidized as well. Then your work would be in figuring out how to cable up
the system, doing some FPGA work, and writing software to get the data to
the PC. If you want USB 2.0 you can probably find an FPGA board with it,
but I'd run those performance tests first, and unless you have GigE, don't
even think about Ethernet (even with GigE I'd be worried). If I was doing
it, I'd opt for PCI, but then again, if I was doing it I'd be using one of
our boards ;-)
commercial solution, but I cannot find any. I have looked at the DSP
boards from Bittware, but they are all too expensive. Additionally, I
"Expensive" is a relative term. We design and sell high end boards for high
end markets (why is the bar scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" coming to
mind?). When our commercial customers compare our board costs to the real
costs of doing it themselves (where time and labour count), they see the
value, otherwise we wouldn't be in business.
We do understand that for hobbyists and some university projects we are too
expensive, but frankly we are not in the development board business and
don't want to be.
don't see a way of interfacing those boards with the EZ-Kits.
Our boards interface with our boards, and other off-the-shelf boards, quite
easily. Interfacing with EzKits is not some we worry about too much.
Good luck in your project.
-------------
Ron Huizen
BittWare
" ... we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast ..."
Nick the bartender, in "It's a Wonderful Life"
.
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