USB 2.0 Streaming using FPGAs

Hi All,

I was wondering if its possible to stream data at 480Mbps from a PC to 
a USB 2.0 port on a FPGA development board and send the data out of a 
SMA port on the board. The XUPV2P board has an onboard USB 2.0 and SMA 
ports. Can this board be used for this application?

Thanks,
Billu

> Hi All,
>
> I was wondering if its possible to stream data at 480Mbps from a PC to
> a USB 2.0 port on a FPGA development board and send the data out of a
> SMA port on the board. The XUPV2P board has an onboard USB 2.0 and SMA
> ports. Can this board be used for this application?
>
> Thanks,
> Billu

It's possible, but transfer rate depends from USB chipset.

Any ideas/pointers on how i can get started on a setup like this. So, 
the USB 2.0 on the XUPV2P might not be able to support 480Mbps. What 
USB chipset can I use to get the maximum transfer rate, and how would 
I interface the chipset w/ the PC/FPGA?

- Thx

On Jan 29, 4:29 pm, g.bernoc...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Hi All,
>
> > I was wondering if its possible to stream data at 480Mbps from a PC to
> > a USB 2.0 port on a FPGA development board and send the data out of a
> > SMA port on the board. The XUPV2P board has an onboard USB 2.0 and SMA
> > ports. Can this board be used for this application?
>
> > Thanks,
> > BilluIt's possible, but transfer rate depends from USB chipset.

On 29 Jan 2007 14:00:17 -0800, billu wrote:

>
>
>Any ideas/pointers on how i can get started on a setup like this. So, 
>the USB 2.0 on the XUPV2P might not be able to support 480Mbps. What 
>USB chipset can I use to get the maximum transfer rate, and how would 
>I interface the chipset w/ the PC/FPGA?
>
>- Thx
>
>On Jan 29, 4:29 pm, g.bernoc...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > Hi All,
>>
>> > I was wondering if its possible to stream data at 480Mbps from a PC to
>> > a USB 2.0 port on a FPGA development board and send the data out of a
>> > SMA port on the board. The XUPV2P board has an onboard USB 2.0 and SMA
>> > ports. Can this board be used for this application?
>>
>> > Thanks,
>> > BilluIt's possible, but transfer rate depends from USB chipset.
>

I would look at the Xilinx ML403 eval board.  I don't remember the speed of
the USB but it does have ethernet 10/100/1000 trimode and a a Vertex 4 (and a
bunch of other I/O's.)  It runs about $500 US

The product brief doe not say what speed the 3 USB ports run at.  Here is the
link.

http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xebiz/designResources/ip_product_details.jsp?sGloba
lNavPick=PRODUCTS&sSecondaryNavPick=Design+Tools&category=&iLanguageID=1&key=H
W-V4-ML403-USA

In article <1170108017.266330.67340@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com>,
 "billu" <bkamakot@gmail.com> writes:
|> Any ideas/pointers on how i can get started on a setup like this. So, 
|> the USB 2.0 on the XUPV2P might not be able to support 480Mbps. What 
|> USB chipset can I use to get the maximum transfer rate, and how would 
|> I interface the chipset w/ the PC/FPGA?

You won't get 480Mbs, regardless of the USB chip. 320 to 400 is the limit, it's
very fragile and requires a lot of "care" on the PC-side. For a start have a
look at the EZUSB2-chips made by Cypress. They have an easy interface bus for
such transfers.

If you want reliable transfers for longer periods over USB: Forget it, you have
been warned...

-- 
         Georg Acher, acher@in.tum.de
         http://www.lrr.in.tum.de/~acher
         "Oh no, not again !" The bowl of petunias

On 2007-01-29, billu <bkamakot@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I was wondering if its possible to stream data at 480Mbps from a PC to 
> a USB 2.0 port on a FPGA development board and send the data out of a 
> SMA port on the board. The XUPV2P board has an onboard USB 2.0 and SMA 
> ports. Can this board be used for this application?

The USB2 port on the XUPV2P board is only designed as a USB programming
cable replacement for the purpose of configuring the FPGA. It is actually
possible to work around this (look for the xup programming tool), but I
guess it will be a lot of work to actually get it working on the XUPV2P
board.

/Andreas

Thx for everyones replies. The reason we are looking into FPGA based 
solutions is b/c we would preferably like a SMA output (since our 
modules have a SMA interface). The Cypress EZUSB2 output interface is 
convenient (not fast enough), but its not compatible with our RF 
module.

Assuming we got a board like ML403, how can we go about implementing 
this application?

On Jan 29, 9:10 pm, a...@in.tum.de (Georg Acher) wrote:
> In article <1170108017.266330.67...@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com>, "billu" <bkama...@gmail.com> writes:|> Any ideas/pointers on how i can get started on a setup like this. So,
> |> the USB 2.0 on the XUPV2P might not be able to support 480Mbps. What
> |> USB chipset can I use to get the maximum transfer rate, and how would
> |> I interface the chipset w/ the PC/FPGA?
>
> You won't get 480Mbs, regardless of the USB chip. 320 to 400 is the limit, it's
> very fragile and requires a lot of "care" on the PC-side. For a start have a
> look at the EZUSB2-chips made by Cypress. They have an easy interface bus for
> such transfers.
>
> If you want reliable transfers for longer periods over USB: Forget it, you have
> been warned...
>
> --
>          Georg Acher, a...@in.tum.de
>          http://www.lrr.in.tum.de/~acher
>          "Oh no, not again !" The bowl of petunias

billu wrote:

> Any ideas/pointers on how i can get started on a setup like this. So,
> the USB 2.0 on the XUPV2P might not be able to support 480Mbps. What
> USB chipset can I use to get the maximum transfer rate, and how would
> I interface the chipset w/ the PC/FPGA?

Try looking up the USRP.

That uses a Cypress chip connected to a Cyclone II and appears to work
reasonably well, although there are plenty of caveats with USB :(

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C

"billu" <bkamakot@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1170134071.732630.323580@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> Thx for everyones replies. The reason we are looking into FPGA based
> solutions is b/c we would preferably like a SMA output (since our
> modules have a SMA interface). The Cypress EZUSB2 output interface is
> convenient (not fast enough), but its not compatible with our RF
> module.

The EZUSB FX2 Slave fifo interface is (i.e. can be configured as) 16 bit @ 
48MHz, which is faster than USB2.  The FX2 won't be a bottleneck on a USB2 
system, though you're likely to need the FPGA anyway to do your format 
conversion.

As other people have said, it will be the PC which is more likely to limit 
you, though that's not as much of a problem as it used to be when USB first 
came out.

Will

billu <bkamakot@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi All,

>I was wondering if its possible to stream data at 480Mbps from a PC to 
>a USB 2.0 port on a FPGA development board and send the data out of a 
>SMA port on the board. The XUPV2P board has an onboard USB 2.0 and SMA 
>ports. Can this board be used for this application?

What's your requirements regarding:
  * Throughout
  * Latency
  * Ease of use
  * Ubiquity