JESD204B FPGA debug software accelerates high-speed design
The JESD204B Xilinx Transceiver Debug Tool provides an on-chip, 2-D statistical eyescan that helps designers of radar arrays, software-defined radio and other high-speed systems more quickly verify the signal integrity of JESD204B data converter-to-FPGA designs using gigabit transceivers. It supports the 312.5-Mbps to 12.5-Gbps JESD204B data converter-to-FPGA serial data interface and Xilinx 7 series FPGAs and Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoCs.
“The Analog Devices JESD204B Xilinx Transceiver Debug Tool provides on-chip eyescanning that augments the test and measurement process by statistically determining signal integrity inside the FPGA,” said Revathi Narayanan, High Speed I/O product manager, Xilinx. “Where other techniques probe the outside of the FPGA package and acquire the signal before it has been processed by Xilinx’s automatic gain control and equaliser blocks, ADI’s approach yields a more accurate result by utilizing the Xilinx transceiver on-chip eyescan feature to allow developers to monitor the signal integrity and design margin on their JESD204B links inside the FPGA.”
The JESD204 and the JESD204B revision data converter serial interface standard was created through the JEDEC committee to standardize and reduce the number of data inputs/outputs between high-speed data converters and other devices, such as FPGAs. Fewer interconnects simplifies layout and allows smaller form factor realization without impacting overall system performance. These attributes are important to address the system size and cost constraints of a range of high speed ADC applications, including wireless infrastructure (GSM, EDGE, W-CDMA, LTE, CDMA2000, WiMAX, TD-SCDMA) transceiver architectures, software-defined radios, portable instrumentation, medical ultrasound equipment, and Mil/Aero applications such as radar and secure communications.
ADI’s reference design gathers data directly from the on-chip Rx margin analysis feature in the 7 series IBERT core and manages the data locally inside the FPGA or one of the ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore processors, displaying the data on an HDMI monitor or over Ethernet to a remote monitoring station. Typically, other scanning tools measure signals off-chip and require costly test and measurement equipment or transfer the data back over JTAG to be viewed on a host/development PC in the lab.
Alternative scanning tools typically measure high-speed data links by generating a pseudo-random bit stream (PRBS) that is checked for bit-level correctness in a closed development environment. This approach does not describe how well the design is performing or if it might be on the verge of failure. ADI’s reference design measures link robustness using actual JESD204B serial data running to the FPGA. This use of “live” data enables signal fidelity to be monitored even after the design has been deployed in the field, which allows for real-time and predictive maintenance over the life of the product.
Download the reference design at www.em.avnet.com/en-us/design/drc/Pages/Analog-Devices-Linux-JESD204B-Eyescan-Software.aspx
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