FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures Guidelines and a prototype implementation example Authors: Ricardo Costa (ISEP/CIETI/LABORIS) / and Gustavo Alves (ISEP/CIETI/LABORIS), Mário Zenha-Rela (FCTUC/CISUC), Rob Poley (Heriot-Watt University), Campbell Wishart (Heriot-Watt University) ICELIE'2009 Porto, 3-5 November 2009

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 2/15 Presentation outline Introduction Architectural considerations Remote access Implemented prototype Conclusions and future work

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 3/15 Introduction - More labs required for practical work at campus and after classes status allow students to interact with real equipments from everywhere at anytime without physically being present in a classical lab Create more labs Provide access to real experiments through the web Solutions Cost ! several hardware and software architectures i) - only qualified people are able to develop them; ii) - the adopted instruments and modules (I&M) may be expensive with many features not required; iii) - reusing and interface I&M is not simple problems feature use a reconfigurable hardware infrastructure with I&M able to share solution + Flexibility/Reuse of I&M - Price + Collaboration

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 4/15 Architectural considerations I Proposal: use FPGA-based Boards Typical Weblab architecture:

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 5/15 Architectural considerations II Benefits of using FPGAs for replacing the instruments and the instrumentation server: costs will be reduced; reconfiguration capabilities allow implementing different measurement instruments; and provides modularity and flexibility in the construction of weblab infrastructures. Conceptual weblab architecture using an FPGA

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 6/15 Architectural considerations III Two solutions for using FPGAs for implementing a Weblab infrastructure:

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 7/15 Remote access I Generic architecture:

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 8/15 Remote access II Suggested architectures for the Weblab infrastructures: Hybrid approach SoC approach

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 9/15 Hybrid approach SoC approach Some solutions available in the market: Remote access III

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 10/15 Spartan-3E starter kit - XILINX A/D and D/A Ethernet port I/O ports LCD display Lantronix module (MicroWebserver) I/O ports Ethernet port Adopted devices: Implemented prototype I

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 11/15 Implemented weblab infrastructure Implemented prototype II Function generator

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 12/15 Physical interfaces used to control the function generator Control / monitor web interfaces for controlling / monitoring the function generator Developed through a collaboration agreement between CIETI/Laboris and an M.Sc. Student from Heriot- Watt University (Scotland) Implemented prototype III

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 13/15 Conclusions Adopting this architecture will: - simplify the creation of Weblab infrastructures; - allow sharing and reusing instruments and modules; - increase collaboration; - reduce costs.

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 14/15 Some difficulties appeared during the collaboration because… Difficulties to understand/explain all details… It would be difficult to use the FG on another Weblab infrastructure, based on the presented architecture… It was necessary to specify a logical interface ! It defines a set of open, common, network-independent communication interfaces for connecting transducers, will facilitate the implementation and sharing of different instruments/modules, in a compatible weblab infrastructure. Future work

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 15/15 THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION Ricardo Costa webpage:

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 16/15 Benefits of using FPGAs for replacing the instruments and the instrumentation Server: costs will be reduced; reconfiguration capabilities allow implementing different measurement instruments; and provides modularity and flexibility in the construction of weblab infrastructures. Conceptual weblab architecture using an FPGA But…other solution could be the adoption of μps / μcs !!! Architectural considerations – extra

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 17/15 Architectural considerations – extra Why adopting FPGA instead of μps / μcs ?

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 18/15 FGPA reconfiguration options (Total or Partial Static or Partial Dynamic ?): Architectural considerations – extra

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 19/15 Example of two FPGA-based Boards solutions from Xilinx: Architectural considerations – extra

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 20/15 IEEE Std. IEEE Standard for a Smart Transducer Interface for Sensors and Actuators—Common Functions, Communication Protocols, and Transducer Electronic Data Sheet (TEDS) Formats (IEEE Std ™-2007) - It is the basis to interoperate all members of the IEEE 1451 family enabling the control of trigger and status signals, the operation modes definitions, etc. - all transducers must implement a TIM (transducer interface module) - the Std. defines all functions performed by TIMs; - all transducers are specified by a TEDS (Transducer Electronic Data Sheets) - the Std. defines all functions to read/write form/to the TEDS; - Provides a set of Application programming interfaces (APIs) to facilitate communications with the TIM and with other applications through a NCAP (Network Capable Application Processor).

Ricardo Costa - ICELIE’09 - November FPGA-based Weblab Infrastructures 21/15 IEEE Std.