Simple PCIe FMC Carrier – SPEC

The Simple PCIe FMC Carrier – SPEC can hold one FMC card and an SFP connector.

On the PCIe side it has a 4-lane interface, while the FMC mezzanine slot uses a low-pin count connector. This board is optimized for cost and is usable with most of the FMC cards designed within the OHWR project (e.g. ADC cards, Fine Delay).

Programable resources

• Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA (XC6SLX45T-3FGG484C)

Memory

• 256MB DDR3 2Gbit (MT41J128M16HA-15E)
• 32 MB SPI Flash for FPGA configuration (M25P32-VMF6P – EOL).

Connectivity

• 1x SFP cage for fiber optic transceiver (WR support) 1.25 and 2.5Gbps
• 2x SATA connector
• 1x JTAG header for Xilinx programming during debugging
• 1x Mini USB UART bridge
• Power connector jack 5.5/2.1mm

Clocking res.

• 1×10-280 MHz I2C Programmable XO Oscillator, starts up at 100 MHz (Silicon Labs Si570, freely usable)
• 1x 25 MHz TCXO controlled by a DAC with SPI interface (AD5662, used by White Rabbit PTP core)
• 1x 20 MHz VCXO controlled by a DAC with SPI interface (AD5662, used by White Rabbit PTP core)
• 1x low-jitter frequency synthesizer (TI CDCM61004, fixed configuration, Fout=125 MHz, used by White Rabbit PTP core)

Power Supply

• Power supply 12V,
• Power consumption 5-12W

Other 

• 4-lane PCIe (Gennum GN4124)
• FMC slot with low pin count (LPC) connector
• on-board thermometer IC (DS18B20U+)
• unique 64-bit identifier (DS18B20U+)
• programmable Red and Green LEDs
• 2 buttons
• 6-layer PCB

This PCIe Carrier has been designed to be used together with a single FMC card and an SFP connector to build various elements of accelerator control systems. Use cases include large pixel detector readout systems, acquisition of bunch-by-bunch data streams and online processing of data applications using GPUs. The SPEC has been tested with links running up to 2.5Gbps allowing multiple data streams multiplexed onto a single link. SPEC is tailored to the needs of White Rabbit time and event distribution networks and can be implemented as a simple White Rabbit node in pair with FMC DIO 5CH TTL A.

More technical information:   https://www.ohwr.org/projects/spec/wiki

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