On 10/29/07, Dan Halperin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In order for SDRs that think of their FPGA code as software (which I > think has to be where this is going to realize its full power), it seems > likely that we will need completely automated and reasonably fast ways > to rebuild the FPGA on the fly. Do these exist?
Rebuilding an entire FPGA image on the fly isn't in the cards just yet, though some high end Xilinx FPGAs do support "partial reconfigurability" which will allow a design to have a standardized IO interface and all the "guts" are reprogrammed without powering down the device. This could allow, in theory, one "IO ring" to be made for the USRP and the user would fill in the "guts" with their signal processing application (eg: wideband TDMA, CDMA, narrowband FSK, etc). As long as each of the guts had the same hooks to the outside, the FPGA can be put into a state of lockdown while being reprogrammed, and a reset can be applied to the guts once reprogrammed. The reprogramming time is on the order of milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds I believe, but I could be mistaken. More information with regards to the Xilinx specific implementation can be found here: http://www.xilinx.com/products/design_tools/logic_design/advanced/partialreconfig.htm Brian _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio