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How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

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Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#11

Post by dragontamer »

vvanders wrote: post #10
dragontamer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much RAM does that FPGA hold? When your entire chip is programmable-logic, you don't have much room for RAM. The MachXo3LF-6900 has a grand total of 240 kBITs, or 30kBytes of storage. In contrast, the STM32F746G will get you 320kBYTES of storage, 10x the capacity. At 75MHz and 1-bit per cycle, that's still only 35ms of storage. Furthermore, it'd be a lot easier to program a Microcontroller to compress the dat…

> I have doubts that a cheap FPGA can accomplish all that at the same speed. A cheap FPGA can probably do that at 5x the speed. Parallel operations like these are specifically what they're build for.

Speed isn't the only consideration here. 5x the speed needs 5x the RAM to store it in. But FPGAs will NEVER have as much RAM as a dedicated microcontroller.

Again, you're looking at ~320kBytes on the $25 STM32 microcontroller board, against ~30kBytes on the $25 FPGA board. With 1/10th the RAM, the FPGA will store far less useful data.

The typical Oscilloscope is like 100MHz. Getting a cheap 75MHz logic analyzer is perfectly acceptable. Storing and processing all that data (ie: outputting it to an Ethernet port) start to become the main issues once the speed issue is solved.

In my experience, those small FPGAs run out of room rather quickly too. Throw down something as simple as a Wallace tree multiplier and suddenly half your LUTs are eaten up.

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#12

Post by revelation »

dragontamer wrote: post #11
vvanders wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have doubts that a cheap FPGA can accomplish all that at the same speed. A cheap FPGA can probably do that at 5x the speed. Parallel operations like these are specifically what they're build for.

Speed isn't the only consideration here. 5x the speed needs 5x the RAM to store it in. But FPGAs will NEVER have as much RAM as a dedicated microcontroller. Again, you're looking at ~320kBytes on the $25 STM32 microcontroller board, against ~30kBytes on the $25 FPGA board. With 1/10th the RAM, the FPGA will store far less useful data. The typical Oscilloscope is like 100MHz. Getting a cheap 75MHz logic analyzer is pe…

What are you even talking about? FPGAs routinely interface with DDR3 and other "big buckets of memory" should you need them. Try that with your STM32.

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#13

Post by dragontamer »

revelation wrote: post #12
dragontamer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed isn't the only consideration here. 5x the speed needs 5x the RAM to store it in. But FPGAs will NEVER have as much RAM as a dedicated microcontroller. Again, you're looking at ~320kBytes on the $25 STM32 microcontroller board, against ~30kBytes on the $25 FPGA board. With 1/10th the RAM, the FPGA will store far less useful data. The typical Oscilloscope is like 100MHz. Getting a cheap 75MHz logic analyzer is pe…

What are you even talking about? FPGAs routinely interface with DDR3 and other "big buckets of memory" should you need them. Try that with your STM32.

What price point are we talking about here?

Throw down a single DDR3 Memory chip, and you've already eaten up like half the $25 hardware budget.

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/micron-technology-i...

The "embedded" solution is: buy embedded on-board SRAM when you need it, and if necessary, buy an embedded on-board SRAM memory controller if you need it. Building your own memory-controller out of an FPGA sounds like hell to layout.

Anyway, if we're talking about cheap stuff, DDR3L isn't the technology of note. This is about simpler SDRAM-level stuff, maybe a few MB at a time is sufficient.

----

Furthermore: How many LUTs will your memory controller take up?

http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DesignSoftwareAndIP/I...

According to this, Lattice's DDR3L 16-bit memory controller is 2500 LUTs. The $25 FPGA only has 6300-LUTs, so you've already used up 40% of the chip on just memory-interfacing!

Yeah, you can accomplish a lot with a $600 FPGA with a Million-bajillion-LUTs and embedded cores. But at the $25 price point, FPGAs often run out of room. You don't have many LUTs to work with.

Dollar-for-dollar, a microcontroller will outperform an FPGA in most tasks. That's just the facts. ASIC-implemented memory-controllers and ASIC-implemented large banks of internal SRAM just work better for computer-like tasks.

FPGAs should be used for custom logic that isn't typically handled by a microcontroller / microprocessor. Not memory-controllers and ALUs that already exist in an easily packaged form. There's a reason why high-level FPGAs have embedded ARM cores and embedded memory-controllers in them (alas: such technology is likely out of the reach of cheap $25 FPGAs)

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#15

Post by zokier »

dragontamer wrote: post #13
revelation wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even talking about? FPGAs routinely interface with DDR3 and other "big buckets of memory" should you need them. Try that with your STM32.

What price point are we talking about here? Throw down a single DDR3 Memory chip, and you've already eaten up like half the $25 hardware budget. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/micron-technology-i... The "embedded" solution is: buy embedded on-board SRAM when you need it, and if necessary, buy an embedded on-board SRAM memory controller if you need it. Building your own memory-controller out of an FPGA sound…

Here is just a random FPGA board with onboard 32MB SDRAM. All with whopping $17 BOM according to the author:

> Earlier this year, I calculated the part cost of the CAT Board with an HX8K at $17

https://hackaday.io/project/7982-cat-board

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#16

Post by revelation »

dragontamer wrote: post #13
revelation wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even talking about? FPGAs routinely interface with DDR3 and other "big buckets of memory" should you need them. Try that with your STM32.

What price point are we talking about here? Throw down a single DDR3 Memory chip, and you've already eaten up like half the $25 hardware budget. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/micron-technology-i... The "embedded" solution is: buy embedded on-board SRAM when you need it, and if necessary, buy an embedded on-board SRAM memory controller if you need it. Building your own memory-controller out of an FPGA sound…

Only 1/3rd for the DDR3 controller? That's a great result, given the remainder of a logic analyzer is.. well let's just say there is not much to it, even with protocol decoding.

The point here is: you can get the DDR3 IP block, put it into your FPGA, and your timing will still work just fine. Which is of course kind of a big deal here. I can't put close to the level of logic in a DDR3 interface in a microcontroller and still have it hit the correct timing; all of that pretty much falls apart at the mention of "pipelining" or "vectored interrupt controller". Try doing protocol decoding on the same microcontroller that does the sampling.

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#17

Post by dragontamer »

revelation wrote: post #16
dragontamer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What price point are we talking about here? Throw down a single DDR3 Memory chip, and you've already eaten up like half the $25 hardware budget. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/micron-technology-i... The "embedded" solution is: buy embedded on-board SRAM when you need it, and if necessary, buy an embedded on-board SRAM memory controller if you need it. Building your own memory-controller out of an FPGA sound…

Only 1/3rd for the DDR3 controller? That's a great result, given the remainder of a logic analyzer is.. well let's just say there is not much to it, even with protocol decoding. The point here is: you can get the DDR3 IP block, put it into your FPGA, and your timing will still work just fine . Which is of course kind of a big deal here. I can't put close to the level of logic in a DDR3 interface in a microcontroller…

Erm, you just buy a microcontroller that supports DDR3 out of the box if you care about large amounts of RAM. There are literally thousands of microcontrollers out there, with a configuration for every single possible task imaginable.

In contrast, you "contact the sales office" of an IP-block of Verilog and read through a ton of FPGA documentation.

I mean, if you really want to just "buy one chip" and do everything with it, be my guest. But honestly, its sometimes easier to just go to a different page in Digikey and buy what you need, instead of trying to build everything you need every time.

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#18

Post by revelation »

dragontamer wrote: post #17
revelation wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 1/3rd for the DDR3 controller? That's a great result, given the remainder of a logic analyzer is.. well let's just say there is not much to it, even with protocol decoding. The point here is: you can get the DDR3 IP block, put it into your FPGA, and your timing will still work just fine . Which is of course kind of a big deal here. I can't put close to the level of logic in a DDR3 interface in a microcontroller…

Erm, you just buy a microcontroller that supports DDR3 out of the box if you care about large amounts of RAM. There are literally thousands of microcontrollers out there, with a configuration for every single possible task imaginable. In contrast, you "contact the sales office" of an IP-block of Verilog and read through a ton of FPGA documentation. I mean, if you really want to just "buy one chip" and do everything w…

I don't think you quite realize what kind of microcontrollers would even come with a DDR3 interface. But if you want to waste away a > 500 MHz chip with sampling GPIO and DMAing that to memory (good luck hitting anything close to what an FPGA could do here, that kind of chip tends to come with multiple levels of caching, pinmuxing, ...) you must have a large BoM and power budget.

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#19

Post by patrickg_zill »

dragontamer wrote: post #2

There's been various discussions around here, and often the Raspberry Pi comes up. The Raspberry Pi is a great board and everything, but this "Logic Analyzer" use case is a great example of where a Microcontroller should be used rather than a general-purpose computer. The STM32F746G looks like a far "weaker" processor. 216MHz, only 320KB of RAM... the "Computer" specs look utterly awful compared to the Raspberry Pi Z…

If you ran a different OS on the Pi, would you get the consistency? For instance, FreeRTOS has been ported (unsure of quality) https://github.com/jameswalmsley/RaspberryPi-FreeRTOS .

Re: How We Turned 8 Popular STM32 Boards into Powerful Logic Analyzers

#20

Post by dragontamer »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #19
dragontamer wrote: post #2

There's been various discussions around here, and often the Raspberry Pi comes up. The Raspberry Pi is a great board and everything, but this "Logic Analyzer" use case is a great example of where a Microcontroller should be used rather than a general-purpose computer. The STM32F746G looks like a far "weaker" processor. 216MHz, only 320KB of RAM... the "Computer" specs look utterly awful compared to the Raspberry Pi Z…

If you ran a different OS on the Pi, would you get the consistency? For instance, FreeRTOS has been ported (unsure of quality) https://github.com/jameswalmsley/RaspberryPi-FreeRTOS .

You'd get more consistency for sure, but nothing that approaches the 75MHz (13 nanoseconds!!) needed to capture data from the GPIO pins.

From my understanding of the Raspberry Pi, the GPIO pins simply weren't designed for that level of speed. Which is fine, the Raspberry Pi was designed for other stuff. Its all about tradeoffs.

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