Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Joze Dedic" <[email protected]> · Fri, 2 Mar 2007 16:33:18 +0100

Hi David

Can you give some more details for the requirements?

Generally an OS is required to run EPICS, which requires the use of
processor. Here you have several possibilities:
- you can use soft-core processor for your FPGA circuit (for Altera that
would be NIOS)
- you can use in-FPGA hard-wired processor (Xilinx's Virtex II pro with
Motorola Power PC)
- use some standalone embedded processor and connect your FPGA circuit it
via some bus that allows you enough data throughput

One thing you should be aware of is that porting a Linux to a softcore or
hard-wired in-FPGA processor is all but trivial (despite what the Xilinx and
Altera state).

Our practice is to use embedded platform for flexibility and connect it to
the FPGA board over PC/104 bus.
For example, we have built a 500MHz delay generator, capable of producing
programmable delays with the jitter of less than 50ps, which is integrated
in EPICS. For performance we used Xilinx FPGA (thus pushing the
state-of-the-art FPGA to its edge) and for flexibility embedded platform
running Linux (that was a piece of cake because we already have the range of
solutions using embedded platforms).

Cordially,
Joze

-------------------------------
Joze Dedic, Ph.D.
Senior Hardware Developer
Cosylab d.o.o.
Teslova ulica 30
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: +386 1 4776 759
Mobile: +386 41 279 232
http://www.cosylab.com
http://www.microioc.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Kline [mailto:[email protected]] 
> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 2:21 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: epics / fpga
> 
> has anyone got epics to run on an altera fpga?
> 
> thanks in advance,
> /david
> 
> -- 
> 
> +-------------------------------------------------+
> David M. Kline                   [email protected]
> Beamline Controls and Data Acquisition (BCDA) Argonne 
> National Laboratory, Advanced Photon Source
> Argonne IL, 60439                      630.252.8639
>    ---------------------------------------------
>                    Beamlines R Us
> +-------------------------------------------------+
> 

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System