Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] The coming deluge of CPU cycles

[Eric Blossom]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 04:09:24PM +1000, Jason Hecker wrote:
> Would an extra bit of hardware such as a PCI card with PLX's PCI9030 
> breaking out to the USRP with something like an 80 wire IDE cable be 
> suitable for high bandwidth, low latency and lowish cost?

> (http://www.plxtech.com/products/io_accelerators/PCI9030/default.htm)

That's one route, though 32-bit 33-MHz PCI is pretty much the bottom
of the barrel these days.  Hence the interest in PCI-Express and/or
Express Card.

> You might be able to do gigabit ethernet if you just pushed out the data 
> to and from the USRP in plain old ethernet frames directly to a gigabit 
> ethernet port on the PC.  No IP headers and no switches in between.

Yes, there's no particular problem doing Gig E.  You can run it 100m
with CAT5e and 10+ km over fiber.  Both of these are good for putting
the USRP on the tower, next to the LNA and PA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

> I know someone who used gigabit ethernet driver chips hooked to an FPGA 
> in order to push lots of digitised SVGA video data down a long length 
> of CAT5e for a KVM application.

Eric