[hpsdr] Questions re: FPGA firmware

[Alex VE3NEA]

Hi John,

7-band firmware for Hermes is already available. I could not test it myself, but 
I was told that it works fine with cuSDR at the PC side. As I understand, this 
firmware will be optional, because its use leads to a higher current from the 
power supply and more heat dissipation in Hermes, more traffic through the 
network adapter, and requires more CPU power in the PC than a 2-band version.

The capacity of the FPGA in Hermes is much higher than needed for 7 receivers, 
but most of it is used by non-radio code, such as network protocols. I created 
the 7-band code by keeping that part intact and squeezing the receivers in the 
available space. Now I am re-writing the whole networking module, hoping to save 
space for a few more receivers, but this is a huge piece of work that will keep 
me busy for the next few months.

I am using the free web edition of Quartus to compile this project. All FPGA 
code I have written so far has been open source, and this project will also be 
released under GPL.

73 Alex VE3NEA





-----Original Message----- 
From: John Marvin
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 4:36 AM
To: hpsdr at lists.openhpsdr.org
Subject: [hpsdr] Questions re: FPGA firmware

***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****

  I have a few questions regarding Hermes FPGA firmware:

1) I know that some work is being done to support 7 receivers in Hermes.
Will that support be part of the standard firmware, or will it only be
available as a special version?

2) I noticed at one time support for 4 receivers was added to the
Mercury, but then it appears that was backed out to 2 receivers. Was
that done because there were problems/bugs with the 4 receiver version,
or was it due to the space required (I saw a comment saying that with
the 4 receiver version the FPGA was 98% full)?

3) What is the limiting factor on the number of receivers supported
(i.e. FPGA space, FPGA performance, etc.)?

4) Will the source for the Hermes FPGA firmware be made available some
time in the future?

5) Can the firmware be built with the free web version of the Altera
software, or is another version required?

Thanks!

John
AC0ZG
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