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IEEE-1394 (aka FireWire) Core

I am interested in any FPGA cores that implement the IEEE-1394a FireWire interface. The application is to process images from several FireWire digital cameras in a hand gesture recognition system. Our current plan is to dedicate a computer to this task, but it may only be able to handle 3-4 cameras (we want to have as many as 8, meaning we may need 3 computers). The actual processing is quite simple and could be done by a single FPGA.

So far I have found a core from Altera that does what I need, but I would prefer a Xilinx core. Any ideas?

Tom Seim Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Richland, WA

Reply to
soar2morrow
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Hi Tom,

why not just using an existing link layer chip from Philips (if they still exist) or TI? This should save you from quite some hassle. The whole concept could look like this:

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Regarding the future of FireWire: Have you noticed that Apple as one of the biggest promoters does not seem to invest too much into the future of FireWire, any longer? All Intel-based Macs only provide FireWire 400, iPod does not support FireWire any longer. Maybe you should not invest too much time and money into the bus interface.

Best regards,

Felix

-- Dipl.-Ing. Felix Bertram

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snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com schrieb:

Reply to
Felix Bertram

Felix Bertram schrieb:

AFAIR there is only one (very old) chip (TI TSB something) that has firewire and can connect to an FPGA ... all the others have PCI or PCIe

bye, Michael

Reply to
Michael Schöberl

Yes, the TSB12LV01B.

Goodbye, Stéphane.

Reply to
Stéphane Goujet

Not true. There a few 1394a LLCs including the Philips chip. There are however no 1394b non-OHCI (read PCI) chips out there to the best of my knowledge.

/Mikhail

Reply to
MM

just had a quick look at

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The Philips PDI1394L40 is still alive. This one is easily interfaced with an FPGA. We have been quite happy with it.

It was also used in a few other commercial audio products, e.g. in Mark of the Unicorn's audio break-out boxes, along with a QuickLogic FPGA and an 8051.

The advantage here is, that the chip can easily pass the isochronous data to the FPGA, so that the CPU does not need to handle these at all. This makes sure, that you won't need a lot of MIPS, as the CPU will only handle the asynchronous traffic.

Best regards, Felix

--
Dipl.-Ing. Felix Bertram
http://www.bertram-family.com/felix
Reply to
Felix Bertram

The new 17" MacBook Pro has FW800.

I'd suspect that the replacement for the G5 PowerMacs will have FW800, too.

I think Apple looked at what peripherals consumers typically use, and none have FW800 interfaces. Why add an extra interface that won't be used? On the other hand, professional video, audio and graphics people depend on FW800, which is why that interface is included on the "pro" models.

-a

Reply to
Andy Peters

Thanks for all the responses.

I just found out that Sundance DSP is coming out (2-3 months) with a TIM module with:

=B7 Base Camera Link interface (video input) =B7 Composite video SDTV/HDTV input/output: YCrCb =B7 VGA (RGB, RGBHV analog output) =B7 DVI (analog and digital video output) =B7 RSL =B7 SHB =B7 Comports =B7 JTAG =B7 USB 2.0 =B7 FireWire (IEEE1394a) =B7 Fully integrated 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet

This module will have an XC4VFX60. The Firewire is a separate chip (Texas Instruments TSB43Cx43A "iceLynx-Micro").

Tom

Reply to
soar2morrow

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