[Discuss-gnuradio] USRP vs USRP2

[Manne Tallmarken]

Hello all,

I want to start expereiment with software defined radio but can't make up my 
mind which one of the usrp and usrp2 is the most suitable.
I am new to FPGAs but want to start playing with these as well. I use GNU/Linux 
and GCC as much as I can.

Some questions:

The usrp and usrp2 uses FPGAs from different manufacturers so I assume the 
development environment will differ as well. Is anyone of the two more suited 
for a linux system than the other? I don't want to pay any license costs (and 
I'm glad if I can use the dev environment longer time than a trial period... 
btw, I am a student).

To play around with a FPGA on a system like this, will I need the extra size 
and speed xilinx spartan 3 gives me? (Maybe I want to bruteforce some cryptos, 
doing some FIR filters or event wavelet transformations)

Since the usrp2 only have one tx/rx channel I would need two usrp2's to get the 
same number of tx/rx channels as the usrp and this is not currently an 
affordable option. In which cases will I need two tx/rx channels? Examples?

The usrp2 is faster in many ways. In what applications will I need the extra 
speed and extra bandwidth? Examples?

Any other cool stuff I can do with one of the boards but not the other?

Are gnuradio programs written for usrp compatible with usrp2?

Thanks!

Best regards,
Manne