[evla-sw-discuss] TC11IB dev board

[Kevin Ryan]

Bill, that is good news about the Infineon chip.  I truly hope that it
works out.

HOWEVER ... as the EVLA's token pain-in-the-ass ... I believe we 
shouldn't
shoot ourselves in the foot by not looking for alternatives.

For two reasons:

1) Remember the Infineon chip only satisfies the requirement of on-core
    memory - which somehow came to become more important than the original
    requirement of low RFI.  I don't think we should gamble so much time
    and money on the assumption that on-core memory and low RFI are one
    and the same.  Thanks to Clint et. al. we now have some numbers to go
    by with regard to quantifying RFI.

2) We have a requirement (in place for good reason) that we use industry
    supported COTS hardware and software.  The rest of EVLA (as far as I
    know) is following this.  Why not the MIB hardware folk?  By building
    a non-standard physical interface and form factor, the EVLA M&C 
hardware
    will not be able to scale with technology.

    The Internet Appliance business is going crazy.  In a few years there
    will be PCMCIA cards that will do things across a network that are
    unimaginable today.

    Why would we want to design that growth out of our system?

A recommendation:

   1) When the development board comes in, start the RTOS port immediately
	(pay the porting costs, but do not commit to a purchase of the ported
       RTOS and developer seats).
   2) Do some baseline RFI measurements on the development board (I know 
our
      in-house board will be different but we can still get an idea).
   3) Get as many other type development/evaluation boards as we can get 
our
      hands on and put them through the RFI test.
  4a) If the Infineon is a clear winner
      - proceed on course - the RTOS port is well on its way.
      - but plead with our hardware guys to build our in-house board 
around
        an industry standard form factor and interface specification.
  4b) Else if something else is a clear winner
      - We are out only the cost of the RTOS port
  4c) Else if everything fails dismally
      - Redefine 'detrimental RFI',
      - OR, Look into commissioning RFI-clean boards,
      - OR, go back to VLA Data Sets.

Kevin


On Wednesday, May 15, 2002, at 05:28 , Bill Sahr wrote:
>
> A question for consideration - even if the
> development board arrives by Mon, 5/20,
> should we continue some level of effort
> to develop alternatives to the TC11IB chip ?
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