Re: FPGA's are Software Defined (was Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] regarding fft-ifft processing)

[Ryan Seal]

Marcus Leech wrote:
> Robert McGwier wrote:
>
> > The wideband engine, Mercury:
> >
> > http://hpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=MERCURY
> >
> > is almost ready to release and its accompanying transmitter Penelope 
> > will follow shortly.  BOTH of these boards will have ANOTHER Cyclone 
> > II on them with almost 100% of their territory being devoted to 
> > signal processing.  Interface will be done in Ozy.  This is a pretty 
> > inexpensive big jump in processing capability.
> >
> > Look at the prices on these boards that are already available.  This 
> > is very interesting to say the least.  I do believe we will see 
> > GnuRadio support for these boards as HPSDR has borrowed heavily from 
> > GnuRadio on the USB 2.0 interface side.
> >
> >
> > Bob
> The MERCURY board looked intriguing to me, but it's real-mode only, 
> which makes interfacing to a DC quadrature
>  receiver a bit awkward.   For my application (radio astronomy) 
> getting the most bandwidth up to the PC where I
>  can "fiddle" with it is most useful.   But I fully agree that an FPGA 
> is as legitimate a CPU to host SDR software as
>  a Pentium D :-)
I can't understand why everyone wants to build the same board. We do 
this over and over and over again. We know the limitations of USB 
(distance, bandwidth) so why do we continue down the same path. The 
converters provide more resolution but 95% of the people here will 
probably not benefit from that. The Gigabit idea sounds like a plan to me.

Ryan