[hpsdr] Sasquatch II

[Bob McGwier]

I agree that the Beagle board should be looked at like the early Cyclone
board we got and then replaced with our own if possible.

Bob


ARRL SDR Working Group Chair
Member: ARRL, AMSAT, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats,
NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC.
"And yes I said, yes I will Yes", Molly Bloom


-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Covington [mailto:p.covington at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 7:48 AM
To: Bob McGwier
Cc: naylorjs at yahoo.com; hpsdr at lists.hpsdr.org
Subject: Re: [hpsdr] Sasquatch II

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 7:33 AM, Bob McGwier <rwmcgwier at gmail.com> wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> The OMAP3530 is a good SoC.  It will run Linux and well on the ARM.  The
> NEON is a very good floating point SIMD engine.  We could have a
stand-alone
> dsp enhanced computer with networking capability, monitor as well as small
> LCD support, and burning under 2 watts!
>
> It CAN run erlang and do the VR kernel bit and run a yaws server as well!
>
> LLVM has ARM optimization support but it does not yet even think to
> optimized for size in addition to or opposed to optimize by execution
time.
>
> I think we need an extended discussion about what it is we want from the
> embedded device.  OMAPL137 or OMAP3530 is an ARM plus DSP capability.
L137
> is TI DSP floating point.  3530 is NEON SIMD for floating point and TI
> integer 16 bit for Video.  L137 is about 1/2 the power of the 3530.  There
> are other differences but these are the big ones.
>
> Bob

I briefly looked at the BeagleBoard HRM this morning.  It looks like
the 28 pin expansion connector, when configured for option "B" (Table
17, page 79), you have access to 11 of the OMAP's GPIO lines.  This is
enough to implement a byte wide bus to/from ATLAS or to a FPGA/ADC.  I
have not looked at actually what you can actually do with the GPIO
lines in the OMAP.

You also have access to the MMC2 signals on that expansion connector
in option "A" mode and I think this is clocked at 48 MHz.  Since it is
MMC+, you have a byte wide interface here too that might be useful for
interfacing.

Of course, eventually you'd want to do your own OMAP board, but the
BeagleBoard looks like it would be useful for experimentation.  All of
the build files are available including Gerbers.

Phil N8VB


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