Well, I going to ask anyway. Is the pcie connector on the Orion board basically the same as on the new Saturn board used for an interface? The raspberry pi 4 with the I/O board option uses pcie as well. I know the fpga programming is a hurdle but the new Saturn is a future (programming) addition too regarding thin client, could the Orion interface to the raspberry pi 4 as well? Of course, this opens the thin client option up for the Orion.
73’s
Joe
WD5Y
Orion Board - PCIE Interface
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laurencebarker
- Posts: 227
- Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:39 pm
Re: Orion Board - PCIE Interface
Yes, the PCI Express connector on Orion connects to the FPGA and could in principle be used to create an interface from a Raspberry pi type processor. Be aware that it would mean starting again with the FPGA though. The DSP could be retained but everything else - register setting, data transfer, and PCI express interface itself - would be new.
I've no idea what PCIe IP exists for Altera FPGAs. I did find out when creating Saturn that having a PCI express endpoint was only the starting point. That just passes the PCI express messages to and fro; you then need logic that translates those into bus cycles on a local bus. I used a Xilinx IP for that in Saturn; maybe something similar exists for Altera.
I've no idea what PCIe IP exists for Altera FPGAs. I did find out when creating Saturn that having a PCI express endpoint was only the starting point. That just passes the PCI express messages to and fro; you then need logic that translates those into bus cycles on a local bus. I used a Xilinx IP for that in Saturn; maybe something similar exists for Altera.
Laurence Barker G8NJJ
Re: Orion Board - PCIE Interface
I thought maybe that was the original purpose for the pcie on Orion but it sounds like the altera programming would be the bottleneck. Anyway, there could be a possibility out there. Thanks so much for your reply.
73’s
Joe
WD5Y
73’s
Joe
WD5Y
Re: Orion Board - PCIE Interface
There's plenty of good IP for Altera. My understanding is that the original team who worked on openHPSDR development and, in particular, the 2 or 3 people (I don't think it was more than that) who worked on firmware, eschewed any use of commercial IP as not being "open source". This led, of course, a large number of challenges, in particular the very vestigial networking stack.
These same folks also did not want to avail themselves of a paid seat of Quartus in an effort to solve the very significant timing closure issues with P2.
To be clear, Rick, N1GP, our current firmware hero (and I do mean hero!) inherited all this, and certainly nobody expects him to start completely rewriting the firmware, so it remains as it is. But if somebody does want to start over from almost scratch it would not be that much more difficult to duplicate Laurence's work on the Saturn Xilinx FPGA. Commercial IP (but free to distribute) could be used throughout in the same manner on all revisions of the Orion MKII board. Although I suspect the Xilinx Vivado tools are much easier to work with than Quartus.
These same folks also did not want to avail themselves of a paid seat of Quartus in an effort to solve the very significant timing closure issues with P2.
To be clear, Rick, N1GP, our current firmware hero (and I do mean hero!) inherited all this, and certainly nobody expects him to start completely rewriting the firmware, so it remains as it is. But if somebody does want to start over from almost scratch it would not be that much more difficult to duplicate Laurence's work on the Saturn Xilinx FPGA. Commercial IP (but free to distribute) could be used throughout in the same manner on all revisions of the Orion MKII board. Although I suspect the Xilinx Vivado tools are much easier to work with than Quartus.
Re: Orion Board - PCIE Interface
I understand that the altera firmware reconfigure would be quite a task, but if there was a way to use the xylinx code as a basis for that, who knows. I'm really hooked on my 8000dle, I like the case, heatsink, etc. Would be great to have a road for upgrade potential, also good for all of the other Anan models, great selling point. I just saw the pcie interface and figured that someone must've had this future update in mind.
73's
Joe
WD5Y
73's
Joe
WD5Y
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laurencebarker
- Posts: 227
- Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:39 pm
Re: Orion Board - PCIE Interface
I think it was 5 years ago Phil Harman presented his Minerva work at Friedrichshafen. He had used a "demo" version of a commercial IP core. To get unrestricted use of that core would cost $75000 (and that's not a typo). I don't know what the Altera IP is and if/how much it costs. I am confident it would take a lot of effort - person years - to write your own.
Laurence Barker G8NJJ
Re: Orion Board - PCIE Interface
A cyclone iv gx fpga has an hard ip for pcie. It is free. So for the boards with EP4CGX150F896 fpga it could be used.
Jani, ha5ft
Jani, ha5ft