Overview#

The ONIX PCIe Host combines the ONIX FMC Host Module and the PCIe-connectivity provided by the Numato Nereid carrier board.

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  • Acquire from two headstages (or miniscopes)

  • Breakout board connectivity

    • 8x digital inputs

    • 8x digital outputs

    • 12x analog outputs or inputs (±10V)

  • Multi-board synchronization and triggering to increase number of headstages and IO

  • Low-latency closed-loop capabilities (headstage dependent; typically < 100 µs)

Host Module#

The ONIX FMC Host module provides a host interface for serialized headstages and miniscopes, as well as general purpose analog and digital IO. It is a VITA-57.1 compliant mezzanine board that uses high pin-count FMC connector. In combination with a base FPGA board , it provides host PC communication.

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The ONIX FMC Host module.#

  • Two deserializers for any multifunction headstage conforming to the ONIX serialization protocol

  • 12x ±10V analog outputs or inputs. Direction selected via analog switch controllable over the FMC connector.

  • Analog output are always looped back using the analog inputs.

  • 3x high speed LVDS input pairs

  • 2x high speed LVDS outputs pairs

  • 2x high speed, arbitrary logic-level, singled-ended Hi-Z or 50-ohm clock inputs

  • 1x high speed single ended, 50-ohm clock output

  • 4x MLVDS input or output trigger lines

Numato Nereid#

The Numato Nereid is a VITA-57 compliant high-density FMC carrier module, which is compatible with the ONIX FMC Host Board. It has a Kintex-7 FPGA, PCIe bus (Gen2 4x), and 4 GB of RAM for PC-independent data buffering. Our gateware bypasses this RAM when its not needed for maximum close-loop performance.

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The Numato Nereid Kintex-7 PCIe/FMC carrier module (image source).#

PCIe Stack#

We are using a slightly modified version of the excellent, open-source RIFFA project to orchestrate data transmission over the PCIe bus. The PCIe protocol implementation and physical interface is provided by a hard block in the Kintex-7 FPGA.

Riffa License

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