Adam, Thank you so much for this detailed response and the list of toolboxes you currently use for SKARAB! As an embedded engineer working with FPGAs, I empathize with you and your team – I’ve always struggled with the fact that there are so many options to achieve the same goal when developing a system with an FPGA at the core, and that choosing the “best” of many options was so complex and time consuming. Now throw in OpenCL, Vitis, etc., and you have a whole new layer of options! I look forward to hearing about your progress later in the year. Best of luck.
FWIW, the only toolbox that I was not aware of from my initial investigation of “required” toolboxes is the Fixed-Point Designer Toolbox – I may add it to our list of toolboxes or proceed without it and see if the toolflow throws an error. I will respond to this thread if I learn anything new. R/ Nick __________________________________________________ Nicholas Christman Electrical Engineer, Systems Engineering / Testing & Evaluation, Advanced Engineered Systems Group Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (509) 371-6638 From: Adam Isaacson <aisaac...@ska.ac.za> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020 1:44 AM To: Casper Lists <casper@lists.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: [casper] RE: Matlab Toolbox Requirements Dear Nick and Neil, Thanks for your email. @Nick: these are the toolboxes I use for my Matlab R2018a update pack 6 when using SKARAB: >> ver ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MATLAB Version: 9.4.0.949201 (R2018a) Update 6 MATLAB License Number: 967932 Operating System: Linux 4.4.0-159-generic #187-Ubuntu SMP Thu Aug 1 16:28:06 UTC 2019 x86_64 Java Version: Java 1.8.0_144-b01 with Oracle Corporation Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM mixed mode ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MATLAB Version 9.4 (R2018a) Simulink Version 9.1 (R2018a) DSP System Toolbox Version 9.6 (R2018a) Fixed-Point Designer Version 6.1 (R2018a) Signal Processing Toolbox Version 8.0 (R2018a) I have never tried it without all these toolboxes. You may be able to get away with removing one or two of the last three toolboxes. I guess it depends what libraries you use. The best way to see is to contact your Matlab supplier and ask for a trial or evaluation license with the various options. Also, refer to https://casper.berkeley.edu/index.php/getting-started/<https://protect2.fireeye.com/v1/url?k=74081e20-28bd2199-74083435-0cc47adc5fce-4d02cad7387736ed&q=1&e=7e4083ed-0f71-4225-ba61-4d81b5b8bfc0&u=https%3A%2F%2Fcasper.berkeley.edu%2Findex.php%2Fgetting-started%2F> for how to get started with the toolflow and tutorials. Yes, Matlab/Simulink is expensive. Here is a brief hstory of the toolflow. It used to be written entirely in Matlab i.e. no python. The ROACH/ROACH2 uses this Matlab toolflow. The ROACH2 has recently become deprecated and the newer boards (SKARAB, Red Pitaya, SNAP and SNAP2) use the latest toolflow. The latest toolflow still uses Matlab/Simulink - but only the front end. The rest of the toolflow is written in python 3. The CASPER development team have spent many years creating DSP libraries in Simulink. We are currently still using these libraries and SKARAB will continue to use Matlab/Simulink. I can tell you that the idea is to move away from Matlab/Simulink or make provision for other front ends as well, but there is lots to consider. This actually started in 2016. This would mean you would only need a license for the FPGA compile tool i.e. Vivado. In my opinion, the current test philosophy with the CASPER tools needs to be addressed e.g. unit testing etc. The current toolflow also only supports VHDL or verilog (RTL) and Xilinx. The industry is also trending to targeting FPGAs using OpenCL or HLS, which is software based. There are new tools on the market such as Vitis, which allows software developers to target FPGAs as if they were GPUs. Vitis is completely free, but does use Vivado under the hood and you still need a license for Vivado. It comes with a set of software DSP libraries that are all open source, so you could remove Matlab/Simulink and just have a host application that uses these libraries. This then allows us to use the integrated test environments that Vitis provides, which helps solve the unit testing issue. We are also looking at the new Xilinx Alveo Data Accelerator cards (U280) and we will be CASPERising it - talk to me in December :). There is also PYNQ, which is python based and supports a whole range of hardware including the Alveo cards. We are currently in the investigation phase to decide what the next step is for the CASPER toolflow, but there is still lots to explore. We will give more feedback towards the end of this year. Kind regards, Adam Isaacson South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) Hardware Manager Cell: (+27) 825639602 Tel: (+27) 215067300 email: aisaac...@ska.ac.za<mailto:aisaac...@ska.ac.za> On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 8:07 PM Neil Salmon <n.sal...@mmu.ac.uk<mailto:n.sal...@mmu.ac.uk>> wrote: I’m not sure about the CASPER plan, but there’s a whole load of free modules from a multitude of users from many other areas, including tensorflow, it must be the way forward now. When I write new code I go straight to Python and bring in C++ for speed. Good luck, N. From: 'Christman, Nicholas P' via casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu> <casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu>> Sent: 08 January 2020 18:01 To: casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu> Subject: [casper] RE: Matlab Toolbox Requirements Thank you Neil for the quick response. I agree and think that is an excellent path for the future… is a “full Python” toolflow in a working state? If I’m not mistaken, migrating to Python is the future plan for the CASPER toolflow but it is not yet developed nor is it being used yet. Or am I wrong? Thanks, R/ Nick __________________________________________________ Nicholas Christman Electrical Engineer, Systems Engineering / Testing & Evaluation, Advanced Engineered Systems Group Pacific Northwest National Laboratory From: Neil Salmon <n.sal...@mmu.ac.uk<mailto:n.sal...@mmu.ac.uk>> Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2020 9:51 AM To: casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu> Subject: [casper] RE: Matlab Toolbox Requirements In the longer term, move over to Python. N From: 'Christman, Nicholas P' via casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu> <casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu>> Sent: 08 January 2020 17:38 To: casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu> Subject: [casper] Matlab Toolbox Requirements Good Morning CASPER Group, My name is Nick Christman and I’m currently working through the SKARAB / CASPER toolflow integration process. Under normal circumstances, my organization has access to most of the Matlab toolboxes; however, it seems our project will need the DSP Toolbox license (not included by our org) which essentially means we will need to acquire standalone Matlab + Simulink licenses and all of the other toolboxes necessary to work with the SKARAB hardware. Herein lies our dilemma and the reason I’m reaching out to the group. Ideally, to remain efficient and economical for the project, we would acquire only the necessary Matlab toolboxes that will allow us to execute the CASPER toolflow. Has anyone attempted this type of “minimal” installation for the CASPER toolflow? If so, do you have a list of required toolboxes? Or perhaps there is an alternative approach to solve our dilemma? Thank you and I appreciate your support, R/ Nick __________________________________________________ Nicholas Christman Electrical Engineer, Systems Engineering / Testing & Evaluation, Advanced Engineered Systems Group Pacific Northwest National Laboratory -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "casper@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper@lists.berkeley.edu>" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to casper+unsubscr...@lists.berkeley.edu<mailto:casper+unsubscr...@lists.berkeley.edu>. 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