DSP-PC architectural advice needed.

Hello,

I have an idea for a design of a data aquisition system and i am willing to verify the possibility to implement it.

Basically it's an ADC connected to the TS201 that sends the entire information sampled to a PC through one of it's LVDS connectors. On the PC there is a PCI Card that knows how to do LVDS for example the PCI GP-ECL/SSD16. of the EDT group. Before checking all the cards availbe i would like to ask:

1.Did someone do the LVDS connection betwenn the TS201 and PC? 2.Do i need to do something special when connecteing the TS to the PC board? (someone told me that there are special cables for it and the connection is not Trivial).

Thanks in adcance, Marc.

Reply to
soos
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The TS201 has no LVDS connectors as it's a BGA. Do you mean the TS201 EzKit?

LVDS is simply an electrical signalling standard (Low Voltage Differential Signalling) that defines voltage levels, so there is no real "knowing how to do LVDS". The TS201 uses LVDS on its link ports, which have a very specific communications protocol they adhere to, so there is definitely a requirement to know how to run this protocol. While you may find lots of PCI boards that can support LVDS, you're unlikely to find many that implement the TS201 link protocol. What you will find are lots of FPGA based boards where you could implement this protocol. We have such boards, and we've implemented this protocol, but if its for a PC, we tend to use PCI as we have TS201s on PCI boards. And if this is a school or hobby project with limited budget, you probably don't want to pay for our boards, which tend to be high end (performance and cost).

See note above. It's more a matter of implementing TS201 link port protocol than just receiving LVDS signals.

Well, anything is going to need special cables. I think the TS201 EzKit used standard RJ45s but only put 1 bit wide link ports on there. With some care, you might get 250 Mbits/second over that. But you will definitely have some custom cabling to do.

There are lots of ways to do what you want (acquire data on a PC) but it all depends on why you're doing this. A school or hobby project or a work related thing? If you want to learn FPGAs, you could probably get some cheap PCI based FPGA board, rig up a cable, and start hacking away.

------ Ron Huizen BittWare

Reply to
Ron Huizen

Thanks for the informative reply, Ron

With the new information it seems that if my main goal is to transfer data into a pc (putting the TS aside for a moment) then in this perspective The LVDS is a rather exotic option which requires special handling compared to USB2.0 and TCP/IP.

Can I get your opinion about this conclusion?

Thanks in advance, Marc.

Reply to
soos

Hi!

Since Ron seem to be away ATM, I'll offer this explanation:

Like mentioned, LVDS is simply an electrical signalling standard. USB defines both an electrical interface and a binary communication protocol, and TCP/IP defines a communications protocol usually using Ethernet as the electrical interface.

So yes, it will probably be easier for you to use USB or TCP/IP. There are some very easy to use chips out there, that are designed to integrate USB and/or TCP/IP into your design without you having to know the details of the protocols. Amongst these are specially adapted microcontrollers (or modules) with "everything" built in, including the electrical interface and the software protocol stack.

Talking to (through) these chips can be as simple as just reading and writing your data from/to a serial or paralell port, and the chip will handle buffering, transmission and reception transparently.

DJ

Reply to
Dr Justice

Actually, as far as total transistor count/lines of code goes, LVDS is utterly trivial to use compared to USB or TCP/IP. However, the fact that USB and TCP/IP and the associated software come with your PC already tend to weight the choice in their favor. LVDS is quite popular for communication between various embedded devices, however, that don't already have the hardware and/or software to do USB or TCP/IP.

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

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