Hi Jack, Thanks for your reply. Yes it does help. Much appreciated as usual. Nitish and I were actually quite confused about the availability of the two external clocks and the one synthesizer output on the SMA. Hence his email to the list and you. Thank you for clearing that up. I would like to ask if you had any suggestions for a reference and PPS clock? Again as you know, costs is an issue. We had looked at a Meinberg product( https://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/products/modular-railmount-ntp-server-ieee-1588-solution.htm) but it don't think it provides the appropriate PPS signal.
Cheers, Vinand On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 7:57 PM Jack Hickish <jackhick...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Nitish, > > Hope you don't mind, but I'm taking this back on the list. > > Your understanding of the PPS signal is correct. > > If you with to use the on-board SNAP ADCs, you have two clocking options, > both of which require an external signal to be provided. > > 1) Provide a timing reference (usually, but not necessarily, 10 MHz) to > the on-board synthesizer, and use that to generate your sampling clock > (see, for example > https://github.com/casper-astro/tutorials_devel/blob/ba099ddefc8c1f74725bc3d5531e9641c1a41dee/vivado/snap/tut_spec/snap_tut_spec.py#L99 > ) > > 2) Provide a clock at your sampling rate direct to the board. > > You only need to do one of these -- you should either provide a > synthesizer reference on SMATP14 **or** a clock at your sampling rate on > SMATP15. > > The synthesizer on the board has two outputs. One is used to drive the > ADCs (option 1, above) the other is available on the SMA connector you > mention. It's not obvious to me how that would be useful in most > situations, though potentially you could use it to clock an external ZDOK > ADC card. I've only ever used this output for debugging the synthesizer. I > think python software probably exists to control this output (see > https://github.com/casper-astro/casperfpga/blob/master/src/synth.py) > though I don't know how complete it is. > > Hope that helps a bit, > > Jack > > On Fri, 19 Oct 2018 at 04:58 Nitish Ragoomundun < > nitish.ragoomun...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> Hello, >> >> We recently bought a SNAP board and we are having a few issues about >> clocking. I just mailed the CASPER group and got a few interesting >> responses. We would just like to have an explanation about the external >> clock inputs to the board. >> >> Our project basically consists in building a low-frequency array for the >> observation of the deuterium hyperfine line at 327.4 MHz with a bandwidth >> of 250 kHz. The SNAP boards will operate at full 12 channels input, thus >> the ADCs at 250 MSps. We will subsequently decimate the data rate, as our >> working bandwidth is narrow. >> >> Now, can you please shed some light on these statements from the SNAP >> wiki (https://casper.berkeley.edu/wiki/SNAP): >> >> - * Digital 1 PPS: 50 ohm single-ended LVTTL logic levels * >> - >> *... * >> - * External ADC clock: 50 ohm single-ended about +2 dB* >> - >> *... * >> - * External reference for on-board frequency synthesizer: 50 ohm >> about +10dBm * >> - *...* >> >> We understand that the Digital 1 PPS is for synchronisation with a time >> server. And, that the external reference for the frequency synthesizer will >> enable all samples acquired from different boards to be phased properly. >> Please correct us if we are wrong. >> >> We would like to know if the external ADC clock is *required*, and if >> yes, what frequency should we input? >> Furthermore, we observed that there is an output for frequency >> synthesizer as well. Can you please indicate in what way one could use it? >> >> We thank you for your patience. >> >> Kind regards, >> Nitish Ragoomundun >> Department of Physics >> University of Mauritius >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "casper@lists.berkeley.edu" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to casper+unsubscr...@lists.berkeley.edu. To post to this group, send email to casper@lists.berkeley.edu.
