cheap decent SERDES that could connect FPGAs through SATA cable ?

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Peter
QL Wafer Drive
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Re: cheap decent SERDES that could connect FPGAs through SATA cable ?

Post by Peter »

Brane2 wrote:SATA pair coudl do 600MB/s over that cable, which is more than enough to daisy chain whole apartment block with microdrives, floppies etc.
But I can't find simple parallel SERDES chip that I could use for the job.
I don't use FPGA with specific SERDES hardware, as they are expensive and not supported by free tools. The highest I tried was 0.8 Gbit/s per differential line by using the DRR_GENERIC block on ECP5. That requires a clock, so over an SATA cable, only half-duplex would be feasible.

Why not simply use UARTs with LVDS to connect your FPGAs? That should be okay up to 100 Mbit/s without specific hardware.
Brane2 wrote:SATA is going to be obsoleted end get correspondingly more expensive.
Price of the cable would be my very last concern, if it is fine technically. It will take another decade until SATA cables get problematic.
You will have far more difficult challenges than cables. The first is to finish a major piece of QL hardware at all.


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Peter
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Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:47 am

Re: cheap decent SERDES that could connect FPGAs through SATA cable ?

Post by Peter »

Brane2 wrote:
Peter wrote: I don't use FPGA with specific SERDES hardware, as they are expensive and not supported by free tools.
BTW, I was just told that open source tools support whole ECP5 line, including SERDES hardware.
I was referring to the free (of charge) Lattice/Synopsis tools. The open sources ones were way too immature the last time I tried.


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