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| Oscilloscope ASIC Kickstarter instead of Open scope. |
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| unitedatoms:
May be rules did not change, it is just my memory failing. I think the rule is something like "Kickstarter cannot be used to fund software projects not run by the developers themselves." I'd broaden this to all projects, not just software. Why the hell someone will start a campaign to just pay to someone else to do the work. |
| ogden:
--- Quote from: blueskull on January 16, 2020, 07:13:10 am ---Modern embedded processors can easily plot 8-bit or 10-bit data on screen at 60fps, even without much intervention from the CPU. Embedded GPUs can easily do that. Actually, because MegaZoom has on-chip plotter, their output canvas size is fixed, thus no smooth scaling is possible due to no original waveform data. --- End quote --- In case of scope drawing does not mean "plotting" as you say. Think of signal pass/fail (mask) processing - it does not happen at screen refresh rate, signal is "drawn" against mask at waveform update rate. Fixed screen size of MegaZoom was not limitation of ASIC as such, it was just poor design decision. Computer GPU's are ASICs as well, yet they support multiple resolutions . "MegaZoom case" actually shows limitations of ASIC - that you can't fix your errors easily and they cost alot. |
| donotdespisethesnake:
--- Quote from: unitedatoms on January 16, 2020, 03:14:40 am ---May be rules did not change, it is just my memory failing. I think the rule is something like "Kickstarter cannot be used to fund software projects not run by the developers themselves." I'd broaden this to all projects, not just software. Why the hell someone will start a campaign to just pay to someone else to do the work. --- End quote --- Possibly this rule --- Quote ---Projects can’t fundraise for charity. While nonprofits are welcome to launch projects on Kickstarter, projects can't promise to raise funds to donate to a charity or cause. Funds raised on Kickstarter must go towards facilitating the project outlined by the creator on the project page. --- End quote --- There is nothing wrong with raising money for third party to do the work, quite sensible in fact, but it's not something Kickstarter generally support. Other than that, there is no restriction on software projects. |
| edigi:
Just one minor note on this oscilloscope ASIC/SoC project. You/the people involved in this better to be darn good in this kind of design as in case of FPGA if you made a mistake you fix the HDL and recompile/reload (often the design mistake is some kind of missing requirement). In case of ASIC you need re-run the design for another half a million or so. When off-the-shelf components are used and you create only the glue logic with FPGA it's a huge help that you can trust the components to work as per their specifications saving a lot of guesswork where to look for a faulty part in a system working with very fast signals (that necessitate that people working on improving the design have very capable test equipments at their disposal). For simple products the BOM is considerable price factor, for complex products like DSO it's not the BOM that is biggest factor but the several engineering learning cycles that go in it. Do you want to start a project where each learning cycle costs half a million or so or one where at worst case just a redesign of PCB but more often just a rebuild of the glue logic in FPGA is needed? |
| OwO:
The FPGA/ASIC doesn't/shouldn't draw the actual image displayed on the screen. It "plots" traces by taking group min/max, for example min/max for samples 0-1023, 1024-2047, 2048-3071, etc. In my implementation I had the FPGA generate a series of these mipmaps, for example a /16 mipmap, /64 mipmap, /256, etc. The software does the drawing (which in my case was javascript in a browser) by requesting the lowest detailed mipmap that is equal or more detailed than the viewing zoom level. In my case the server side software does the downsampling from the selected mipmap level to the actual screen width in order to conserve network bandwidth. In a proper implementation for an oscope the mipmap generation adds very little memory bandwidth requirement because it is done directly on incoming data, NOT on data read from DRAM like an accelerator would do (that is why I dismissed the accelerator approach). However the implementation should still allow the possibility of reading data from DRAM, for example in FFT mode (assuming you have large >=1M FFT support at all which most scopes on the market don't). |
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