Xilinx ML403

You can buy the ML403 in two ways. First as a stand alone unit that is does not include any design software or cables for $495 that has everything shown here:

Second in a kit form that includes everything in the ML403 stand alone version, plus EDK, ISE (BASE-X Version), and a JTAG download cable (PC-4 or USB)for $895 ($400 more). More information can be found here:

We do provide the EDK projects for each of the reference designs that ship with board and all of them can be downloaded from the links found on the above links.

The $895 kit includes everything that you need to be able to rebuild any of the reference designs and to create new designs or software for the PowerPC and MicroBlaze designs. Some of the IP modules included in EDK do require additional licensing cost, but you have access to evaluation versions of the cores. You can find a complete breakdown of the peripheral cores and if they are require additional licensing here:

At one point in time the speed grades were directly correlated with a timing parameter in our FPGAs. This became unworkable a few generations ago and now the numbers are intended as an relative indication of speed with in the Fabric within the same Family.

I am not familiar with the Camera Link protocol, electrical or AC timing specs, but at 420 Mbps this would be below the low end data rate for the RocketIO MGTs. It may be possible to over sample the data to drop down this low, but it would have to be carefully looked at.

Please keep in mind that the IO SERDES blocks are just serializers and deserializers logic and do not include a CDR (Clock Data Recovery) block. This means that you have to have the necessary clock sources and alignment logic also present in your design.

Ed

Thanks Ed,

Last time I priced the PC4 USB cable was around $500. So I suspect that I'm getting a pretty good package?

As far as I understand the Camera Link interface, the clock is sent along with the data on a separate LVDS pair. The specification wants a National chipset to render the LVDS pairs to TTL/CMOS levels, but I'm thinking that the Xilinx part should be able to handle it.

I found these descriptions listed below in one of the user guides. I see some USB software but more related to hardware peripherals. Is there a way to write data from a host computer GUI down to the Xilinx fabric so that I type a number into my computer, and some register in the fabric changes to match that value?

Best Regards,

Brad Smallridge aivsion.com

bootload Displays menu on VGA/LCD/Serial Port and loads appropriate ACE file based on user input. sw/standalone/bootload/

button_led_test Turns on LEDs when buttons are pressed. sw/standalone/button_led_test/

flash_hello Program designed to be loaded from linear flash describing the process by which it was loaded. sw/standalone/flash_hello/

flash_load Program that loads data from System ACE CompactFlash cards and programs them into FLASH memory. sw/standalone/flash_load/

flash_test Program that writes and reads FLASH to test it. sw/standalone/flash_test/

hello Using C's studio library, prints Hello world! and echoes characters entered via standard input to standard output. sw/standalone/hello/

hello_uart Using the EDK UART driver, prints Hello world! on the UART and outputs characters entered via standard input to standard output. sw/standalone/hello_uart/

iic_eeprom Writes test pattern to IIC and reads back data (Note: This test will overwrite the contents of IIC only if enabled to do so.) sw/standalone/iic_eeprom/

my_ace Program asking user to create their own ACE file. sw/standalone/my_ace/

my_plat_flash Program asking user to load their own design into Platform Flash. sw/standalone/my_plat_flash/

plat_flash_menu (ML401 only) A Program listing the demos available on the Platform Flash. sw/standalone/plat_flash_menu/

ps2_scancodes_polled Polled, reads keystrokes on a keyboard attached to PS/2 port 1 and displays corresponding PS/2 scancodes on standard output. sw/standalone/ps2_scancodes_polled/

simon Simon game using LCD, LEDs, and buttons on the ML40x. sw/standalone/simon/

slideshow Reads audio and video files from CompactFlash via System ACE and displays a slideshow accompanied by music. sw/standalone/slideshow/

sysace_rebooter Program that asks user with which System ACE configuration to reconfigure. sw/standalone/sysace_rebooter/

test_ac97 Program that records sound from the Line- In/Microphone inputs, stores the audio data into DDR memory, then plays the sound to the Line-Out and Headphone outputs. sw/standalone/test_ac97/

testfatfs Simple test program that reads files from CompactFlash via System ACE interface. sw/standalone/testfatfs/

usb_hpi_test Echoes characters typed on a USB keyboard to the LCD and serial port on the ML40x. sw/standalone/usb_hpi_test/

usb_printer Prints Hello World! to a USB printer. sw/standalone/usb_printer webserver Implements a webserver that displays ML40x DIP switch settings and controls LEDs.

sw/standalone/web_server/ xrom ML40x board test and diagnostic program. sw/standalone/ml40x/sw/standalone/xrom/

The PC-4 cable sells for $95, and the Platform USB cable sells for $149. You must be thinking of the now obsolete MultiLinx USB cable. It's still a really good value priced package if you don't have a current copy of EDK. If you already have our SW tools (EDK and ISE) then you would be better off buying the non-bundled version.

Oh, and there is also an optional accessory set that has all of the cables that you might want to use with the board for an extra $50.

If this is true, then you should be able to create a quick and dirty card to plug onto the Xiling Generic Interface (XGI, aka BERG. Also since I didn't explicitly mention this before, the RocketIO MGTs are not in the FX12 part that is on this board. We are creating a similiar version with a FX20 part, but this won't be out until next year.

And this is where we get off the pre-canned design examples and it becomes an "excerise left to the user"....

I think that this would meet your request more or less. This is done with a USB keyboard instead of computer and the register is the LCD panel, but it should provide the basis for the design that you want to implement. Usually when we are creating user controlled input designs we opt to implement them through the UART instead of USB as it's a much easier, but you can certainly do this with a ML40x.

Ed

The "clock" is actually sent at 1/7th of the rate of the pixel-clock - it is more like a frame sync signal.

We have Camera Link in a Virtex-II working, so the part can definately handle it :-)

Cheers, Martin

Hey thanks. That's what I wanted to hear.

Brad

Are the examples written in VHDL or Verilog?

Thanks,

Brad Smallridge

Ummm, how about in EDK project files (aka MHS)?

Almost all of the IP peripherals that are shipped with EDK are written in VHDL to handle the necessary parameterization. You can output the system generated logic that stitches the PowerPC and peripherals together in either VHDL or Verilog. And then of course there's the C or C++ software, drivers and libraries that runs on the PowerPC and pulls the data from one peripheral and pass it to another.

Since your original request was to use the USB interface to write a register element in the design. You could take the USB-to-LCD design that I mentioned before, open the project in EDK, remove the OPB LCD peripheral and replace it with a bare bones OPB IPIF peripheral and tie the write and read buses to your register, modify the software to write the USB data new memory location, resynthesize, place and route and try it out on the ML403.

Ed

Hmm. Sounds a bit complicated.

I was thinking of starting without the OPB because there seems to be a learning curve there. I take it that there is already a Cypress program that communicates to the OPB and PowerPC. If I want to communicate directly to the Xilinx fabric, is there an example program to do this, and does it fit into the Keil compiler linked-4K-byte free evalutation? It seems to me that if you could get a report out of a chosen BRAM you could look inside the chip somewhat like ChipScope. Although ChipScope is another tool that I don't have.