Zynq devices, boards and suppliers

On 17/10/13 19:59, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>> Since Zynq devices represent a complex environment, I'll have a
>> learning curve (good, I like challenges), and I'm interested in the
>> quality of the resources and support that I'll need to overcome my
>> misapprehensions.
>
> I can't suggest any specific boards, but http://blog.elphel.com might be
> of some interest.  Its last few entries are about a Zynq-based project.
> Maybe posting to the blog's comment section will get some suggestions.

Thanks for the pointer. Bookmarked.

A quick scan indicates some points that I don't feel are
relevant to me, and some which may or may not be once I've
read them more carefully.

On 17/10/13 19:59, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>> Since Zynq devices represent a complex environment, I'll have a
>> learning curve (good, I like challenges), and I'm interested in the
>> quality of the resources and support that I'll need to overcome my
>> misapprehensions.
>
> I can't suggest any specific boards, but http://blog.elphel.com might be
> of some interest.  Its last few entries are about a Zynq-based project.
> Maybe posting to the blog's comment section will get some suggestions.

I've now had a more detailed look, and my initial comments
are unchanged.

Overall the October 2 entry (FPGA is for freedom) comes across
as a bit of a rant, but it does contain useful information.

The "uploads your design to Xilinx" for the zero cost toolset
is, of course, less than desirable. It is a valid way of filtering
out the commercial business from the free hobbyist sectors.

The claimed limitations of the software wizard for generating
the memory interface is not good news -- and is just the kind
of information I was hoping to elicit with my question. I would
be curious to know whether or not the tool accurately reflects
the silicon's capabilities.

The "DLL hell" (or linux equivalent!) is also bad news. Not
sure what the solution would be if I suffered the same problem.
Fortunately I have a newly-installed Xubuntu LTS, so it /ought/
to minimise the chance!

FSBL proprietary binary blob. I don't care if it is proprietary,
/provided/ it works correctly. To me it is merely an extension
of the config bitmap :)

On 17/10/13 09:31, MK wrote:
> There are quite  a lot of
> boards based on the Zynq around - eg: Mars ZX3- Zynq-7000 SO-DIMM module (which I have not used and don't recommend o not recommend.)

Enclustra's attitude of "we'll show you this
documentation only /after/ you've become a customer"
doesn't endear them to me. But that's their
commercial decision.

They may be very good, but I would like to be able
to evaluate that for myself! Shame.

Frank Buss wrote:

> Tom Gardner wrote:
>> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
>> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards. Avnet and Digilent
>> are front-runners, but any info/opinions about other
>> suppliers would be helpful too.
> 
> If you don't need it now, you might take a look at the Parallella board:
> 
I know it doesn't have an FPGA, but if you need to add a board
to it for the outer interface, you should check out the Beagle
Board Black.  It has amazing capability and LOTS of varied I/O
pins, for $45!  Runs a complete Linux system, but can be used
"headless" (ie. no screen) easily.  Your added board can have
an FPGA or CPLD on it, if you are designing a board already,
it is quite easy if you won't be running at high clock speeds.
I do a bunch of CPLD and FPGA boards with only 2-sided PCBs.
I have even run Spartan 3A and 3AN FPGAs on 2-sided boards
with no trouble.

Jon

On 19/10/13 00:01, Jon Elson wrote:
> Frank Buss wrote:
>
>> Tom Gardner wrote:
>>> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
>>> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards. Avnet and Digilent
>>> are front-runners, but any info/opinions about other
>>> suppliers would be helpful too.
>>
>> If you don't need it now, you might take a look at the Parallella board:
>>
> I know it doesn't have an FPGA, but if you need to add a board
> to it for the outer interface, you should check out the Beagle
> Board Black.  It has amazing capability and LOTS of varied I/O
> pins, for $45!  Runs a complete Linux system, but can be used
> "headless" (ie. no screen) easily.  Your added board can have
> an FPGA or CPLD on it, if you are designing a board already,
> it is quite easy if you won't be running at high clock speeds.
> I do a bunch of CPLD and FPGA boards with only 2-sided PCBs.
> I have even run Spartan 3A and 3AN FPGAs on 2-sided boards
> with no trouble.

If I was going down that route I would probably
use a Ztex board with a programmable USB slave
8051-class processor and a Spartan 6.

If I understand the datasheets (which is yet
to be demonstrated) the Zynq will allow me to
asynchronously sample an input at 2.4GS/s.
That's my principal I/O requirement :) And at
those data rates, I'd like to have reasonably clean
edges which probably rules out 2-sided boards :)

Now the Ztex website and forums look quite
reasonable, so I'm seriously considering using
them as a *supplier* of a board.

But I'm still interested in information that
will enable me to informally "qualify" other
possible *suppliers*.

On 19/10/13 00:19, Tom Gardner wrote:
> On 19/10/13 00:01, Jon Elson wrote:
>> Frank Buss wrote:
>>
>>> Tom Gardner wrote:
>>>> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
>>>> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards. Avnet and Digilent
>>>> are front-runners, but any info/opinions about other
>>>> suppliers would be helpful too.
>>>
>>> If you don't need it now, you might take a look at the Parallella board:
>>>
>> I know it doesn't have an FPGA, but if you need to add a board
>> to it for the outer interface, you should check out the Beagle
>> Board Black.  It has amazing capability and LOTS of varied I/O
>> pins, for $45!  Runs a complete Linux system, but can be used
>> "headless" (ie. no screen) easily.  Your added board can have
>> an FPGA or CPLD on it, if you are designing a board already,
>> it is quite easy if you won't be running at high clock speeds.
>> I do a bunch of CPLD and FPGA boards with only 2-sided PCBs.
>> I have even run Spartan 3A and 3AN FPGAs on 2-sided boards
>> with no trouble.
>
> If I was going down that route I would probably
> use a Ztex board with a programmable USB slave
> 8051-class processor and a Spartan 6.

Or a more direct competitor to the BBBlack, the
Raspberry Pi, which has an amazing support ecosystem.

Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards. 

Do you know anything about the microzed?  I just heard of it, and it
looks interesting:

http://microzed.org
http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-sbc-runs-linux-on-xilinx-zynq-arm-fpga/

Also the Zybo:

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ZYBO

On 20/10/13 03:02, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
>> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards.
>
> Do you know anything about the microzed?  I just heard of it, and it
> looks interesting:
>
> http://microzed.org
> http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-sbc-runs-linux-on-xilinx-zynq-arm-fpga/
>
> Also the Zybo:
>
> http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ZYBO

They do indeed look interesting for my purposes, but I only
know what I can read on the web.

So, we would /both/ like some info about the suppliers :)

On Sun, 20 Oct 2013 08:47:57 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk>
wrote:

>On 20/10/13 03:02, Paul Rubin wrote:
>> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>>> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
>>> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards.
>>
>> Do you know anything about the microzed?  I just heard of it, and it
>> looks interesting:
>>
>> http://microzed.org
>> http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-sbc-runs-linux-on-xilinx-zynq-arm-fpga/
>>
>> Also the Zybo:
>>
>> http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ZYBO
>
>They do indeed look interesting for my purposes, but I only
>know what I can read on the web.
>
>So, we would /both/ like some info about the suppliers :)
>
>

We're just starting on a uZed signal-processing project. It will be a uZed
plugged into a motherboard that has power, clock, signal input and output
networks, ADC, DAC, connectors, and miscellaneous stuff. We bought two uZed
boards from Avnet and they power up running Linux. My programmer and FPGA guys
are just now learning how to write a C app that interacts with the FPGA, but the
documentation seems good and they are making good progress. I'll be doing the
architecture and designing the hardware. 

I took some pictures. The ones in the ZED documentation are mediocre.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/Micro_Zed_Top.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/Micro_Zed_Bottom.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/Micro_Zed_End.JPG



-- 

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

On 11/11/13 03:08, John Larkin wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Oct 2013 08:47:57 +0100, Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> On 20/10/13 03:02, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>> Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>>>> I'd like to pick people's brains about aspects of
>>>> different *suppliers* of Zynq boards.
>>>
>>> Do you know anything about the microzed?  I just heard of it, and it
>>> looks interesting:
>>>
>>> http://microzed.org
>>> http://linuxgizmos.com/tiny-sbc-runs-linux-on-xilinx-zynq-arm-fpga/
>>>
>>> Also the Zybo:
>>>
>>> http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ZYBO
>>
>> They do indeed look interesting for my purposes, but I only
>> know what I can read on the web.
>>
>> So, we would /both/ like some info about the suppliers :)
>>
>>
>
> We're just starting on a uZed signal-processing project. It will be a uZed
> plugged into a motherboard that has power, clock, signal input and output
> networks, ADC, DAC, connectors, and miscellaneous stuff. We bought two uZed
> boards from Avnet and they power up running Linux. My programmer and FPGA guys
> are just now learning how to write a C app that interacts with the FPGA, but the
> documentation seems good and they are making good progress. I'll be doing the
> architecture and designing the hardware.
>
> I took some pictures. The ones in the ZED documentation are mediocre.
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/Micro_Zed_Top.JPG
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/Micro_Zed_Bottom.JPG
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/Micro_Zed_End.JPG

Thanks, that's useful, and I will be *most* interested to hear how
it goes.

Out of curiosity, how long ago did you buy them and how long did
they take to materialise? Currently Avnet are showing no stock
and 5 weeks lead time.

Worryingly, it has been "5 weeks" for the past 3 weeks - so I'm
concerned that Avnet have "lost interest" in the board. Any info
about Avnet's support practices would be useful.