[hpsdr] Call for Comments and Discussion - OzyII

[Tom Poliquin]

> Laying out a high quality CPU board at reasonable production costs
> might be more of a problem. (avoiding 4+ layers?)

True. Generally the RAM would be external DDR .. requiring
controlled impedances and terminator power supplies. Not
for the meek.

Tom WA6WRA

On Monday 20 July 2009 16:13, Henry Vredegoor wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> I think the least problem is the hardware (complexity and component count
> and such) given the number of example hardware implementations being
> around; one trades hardware complexity for software complexity up to some
> point? Laying out a high quality CPU board at reasonable production costs
> might be more of a problem. (avoiding 4+ layers?)
>
> Reading Phil's proposal it seems we would start (almost) from scratch.
>
> Even if we could copy many existing software parts, I think it would be a
> hell of job to get it all to work at the level of perfection and
> performance we are used to under Linux. (Not that I find it not extremely
> fascinating to see this being developed in an FPGA!)
>
> Development steps I think one would have to roughly go trough:
>
> 1. Get the basic hardware right
> 2. Get YOUR implementation of the soft-core CPU/virtual machine on YOUR
> hardware right
> 3. Get YOUR implementation of a basic OS on the virtual machine right
> 4. Get YOUR TCP/IP network functionality of the OS with YOUR hardware right
> 5. Get the applications (compilers!) working on the networked OS right
> 6. Get the performance of the OS/networking/applications right
>
> IMHO not exactly a trivial job.
>
> TCP-IP is the key to a whole new world of applications for SDR we are just
> starting to explore.
> Do not forget the importance of the support for really (inter-)networked
> applications in the OS (FULL TCP/IP stack, Routing, DNS, etc.)
>
> Henry.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Albertson [mailto:albertson.chris at gmail.com]
> > Sent: maandag 20 juli 2009 20:17
> > To: Henry Vredegoor
> > Cc: Phil Harman; hpsdr at openhpsdr.org
> > Subject: Re: [hpsdr] Call for Comments and Discussion - OzyII
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Henry
> >
> > Vredegoor<henry.vredegoor at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> > >
> > > Hi Phil,
> > >
> > > Last weekend I studied your proposal for a future, new Ozy,
> >
> > OzyII and gave
> >
> > > it some thought.
> > >
> > > I think the implementation of the full Ethernet/TCP-IP
> >
> > functionality in an
> >
> > > FPGA is a difficult and complex task and will take a lot of
> >
> > development
> >
> > > time. (witch could be better spent for "real" HPSDR work
> >
> > ..... :-)  )
> >
> > > I think a real microprocessor based system, maybe an SOC
> >
> > (System On a Chip),
> >
> > > running a (micro-) version of Linux, maybe assisted by some
> >
> > FPGA hardware
> >
> > > and an added high speed LVDS interface to the ATLAS-bus
> >
> > interface would be a better approach.
> >
> > If the FPGA is big and fast enough you can implement a CPU core in the
> > FPGA.  If you do this then you actually save chip count and complexity
> > by not having the CPU chip.
> >
> > I agree that you want a CPU powerful enough to run a general purpose
> > OS.  I think that there are free ARM and free SPARC cores available.
> > SPARC may have the best and most mature OS support.   The other thing,
> > is that if a full OS kernel is running then you will need a bit of RAM
> > and that has to be planned for now.
> >
> > I think using Ethernet in place of USB will open up a lot of new uses.
> >  The big advantage of Ethernet is the maximum length of the cable.  A
> > long data cable means you can place the HPSDR box very close to the
> > antenna.  Maybe even outdoors in a die cast aluminum box then run a
> > fiber cable back to the computer.
> >
> > No antenna feed and no antenna feed losses either.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > =====
> > Chris Albertson
> > Redondo Beach, California
>
> _______________________________________________
> HPSDR Discussion List
> To post msg: hpsdr at openhpsdr.org
> Subscription help:
> http://lists.openhpsdr.org/listinfo.cgi/hpsdr-openhpsdr.org HPSDR web page:
> http://openhpsdr.org
> Archives: http://lists.openhpsdr.org/pipermail/hpsdr-openhpsdr.org/

 1248128898.0