[hpsdr] Mercury

[KD5NWA]

I ended buying the Agilent Spartan III kit for $99 but paid an extra 
$50 to kick it up from the X3S200 to a X3S1000 so I could play with 
CPU architecture and DSP filtering.

It's a pretty nice board besides all the built in RAM it has 512KB of 
32 bit external 10ns RAM. I was surprised that it came with the 
software to generate DSP filters but it requires a copy of MatLab R13 
or R14 which I can't afford at this time.

With the clock doubling feature you can clock the part to 250MHz 
external clock doubled internally to 500MHz the Altera is nowhere 
there in speed. A great part for doing CPU and DSP work, then there 
is Virtex 5 parts now you got some incredible crunching power and $$$.


At 11:08 PM 6/10/2006, you wrote:
>That's also an issue. I need to clock the filter engines at 147.456 MHz.
>This required pipelined 18x25-bit multipliers plus 3-stage pipelined
>accumulators on the Xilinx XC3S400. The high precision coefficients support
>large amounts of decimation in each filter. A slower clock would require
>processing I and Q samples in parallel, rather than serially as I do now.
>The number of multipliers then doubles.
>
>73,
>
>John
>KD6OZH
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "KD5NWA" <kd5nwa at cox.net>
>To: "John B. Stephensen" <kd6ozh at comcast.net>
>Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 03:54 UTC
>Subject: Re: [hpsdr] Mercury
>
>
> > They are also faster parts.
> >
> > At 10:43 PM 6/10/2006, you wrote:
> > >***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> > >
> > >The RAM is a problem. I need lots of it for filters, the FFT and
>traceback
> > >memory. The extra RAM in the smaller Xilinx parts is a big help for DSP.
> > >
> > >The largest Xilinx part available in a non-BGA package now appears to be
>the
> > >XC3S500E and is $26 (1-24 pieces) at Nu Horizons. This provides more than
> > >twice the memory of the Altera, part plus a few more multipliers and
>logic
> > >elements.
> > >
> > >73,
> > >
> > >John
> > >KD6OZH
> > >
> > >----- Original Message -----
> > >From: "Lyle Johnson" <kk7p at wavecable.com>
> > >To: "John B. Stephensen" <kd6ozh at comcast.net>
> > >Cc: "Philip Covington" <p.covington at gmail.com>; <hpsdr at hpsdr.org>
> > >Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 03:24 UTC
> > >Subject: Re: [hpsdr] Mercury
> > >
> > >
> > > > > It would be nice to have at least as many resources as a Xilinx
>XC3S400
> > >(16
> > > > > 18k dual-port RAMs, 16 18x18 multipliers and 7200 logic elements).
> > > >
> > > > The Altera EP2C8 is the largest Cyclone II device I can find in a
> > > > non-BGA package.  It has 165,888 bits of SRAM (36 blocks of 4K bits),
>18
> > > > 18x18 multipliers and 8256 logic elements.  $24 in singles from the
> > > > Altera online store.
> > > >
> > > > 73,
> > > >
> > > > Lyle KK7P
> > > >
> > >
> > >_______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> > Cecil Bayona
> > KD5NWA
> > www.qrpradio.com
> >
> > "Windows the worlds most successful software virus"
> >


Cecil Bayona
KD5NWA
www.qrpradio.com

"Windows the worlds most successful software virus" 


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