[time-nuts] No State Of The Art Counter

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Fri Jan 7 06:27:25 UTC 2011


[context is SERDES inputs to FPGA]

> Also, one has to count the number of 0->1 transitions in each word, such
> that the event counter can be accumulated with the contribution from  each
> word. 

That gets complicated.  My straw man would be to get a single transition per 
word working first.

Let's check the numbers.

If the serial bit rate is 3.2 gigabits, that's 100 MHz per 32 bit word.  If 
you are limited to 1 rising edge per word, that limits your counting to 100 
MHz.

If you are interest in ADEV of a 10 MHz source, 100 MHz is a fine limit.


Below, I'm assuming "transition" means rising edge.

So my first proposal for an API between the front end and the back end would 
be:
  5 bits of offset for the transition
  1 bit for "Yes, there was a transition"
  1 bit for error (More than one transition)

Plan two would be something like:
  5 bits of offset for last transition.
  n bits for number of transitions
(with 0 for none, and xx for too many, aka error)



-- 
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