RE: Epics/Raspberry Pi data acquisition

["Hill, Jeff" <johill@lanl.gov>]

Ø  Given that Altera FPGAs are now built in Intel's 22nm foundries, it is easy

Ø  to imagine that a combo Intel core + altera FPGA could soon see the day.

 

At LANSCE we directly embed the EPICS IOC in the NIOS2 soft-core, instantiated into the fabric of the Altera FPGA.

 

Jeff

 

From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Emmanuel Mayssat
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 12:02 PM
To: Steve Shoaf
Cc: EPICS mailing list
Subject: RE: Epics/Raspberry Pi data acquisition

 

Sweet!
There are a lot of development in this embedded arena.
Intel is becoming very aggressive in relation to ARM.
Of course, you may have heard of the galileo board (x86 arch)
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/intelligent-systems/galileo/galileo-overview.html
but that's so 2013!
At the last CES, Intel announced major initiatives in the embedded arena, including a SD card sized computer
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/edison.html

Given that Altera FPGAs are now built in Intel's 22nm foundries, it is easy to imagine that a combo Intel core + altera FPGA could soon see the day. Well, keep on watching.

--
E

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Subject: Re: Epics/Raspberry Pi data acquisition
From: shoaf@aps.anl.gov
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 11:16:11 -0600
To: emayssat@outlook.com
CC: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov

Emmanuel,

 

Altera has had similar SoC offerings for quite some time just like Xilinx.  Terasic makes an Altera board (DE1-SoC Board $199) similar to the Zedboard.

 

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=205&No=836

 

We've ordered a NOVSOM CV system module board from Novtech that has a complete Altera SoC system on a module so you don't need to design the complicated FPGA or DDR interfaces on your own circuit board.  They currently have the Altera Cyclone V SoC available and are working on an Altera Arria V SoC product.  The NOVSOM AV board to board (B2B) pinout is identical to the NOVSOM CV allowing users to easily switch between Arria V SoC and Cyclone V SoC on the same base board.

 

Steve

 

On Feb 20, 2014, at 5:41 PM, Emmanuel Mayssat <emayssat@outlook.com> wrote:

 

Thanks John,

The past year, I left my RaspPi and Beagleboard in the drawer and started playing with the papilio board
http://papilio.cc/.You probably want to have a look at it! This solution is probably better than what you have + you won't have to deal with the missing ~ $20 FTDI.

Ultimately I have my eyes on the Xilinx ZynQ
http://zedboard.org/ 
http://www.xilinx.com/training/zynq/index.htm
which offer the combination ARM + FPGA for ~ $400 / dev board
which is certainly more expensive than the RaspPi+FPGA solution, but more flexible and higher performance. I also predict that Intel + Altera will offer a similar SOC soon.

In the same space, I am looking at PoE and Qt Embedded.
Check this out
http://www.megaleecher.net/Raspberry_Pi_POE#axzz2tuLQEoyv 
http://www.ics.com/blog/building-qt-and-qtwayland-raspberry-pi#.UwaOhsv8NhF
https://gitorious.org/raspberry-qt/raspberry-qt/source/3c2ed05270137644300cde3b22829380698ff9a9:README.txt

Now imagine that you plug your embedded IOC, PVs are available but GUI are also deployed on a distributed file-system.

Cheers,
--
E

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In the end I was, with relatively little work, able to write some HDL code for the FPGA, program the FPGA from the Pi over the USB connection, and then connect an IOC on the Pi to the FPGA via the USB connection, thus creating  a simple stand alone data acquisition instrument with built-in IOC.