[LAU] Open Sound Interface project beginnings

[Charles Henry]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Christoph Kuhr <christoph.kuhr at web.de> wrote:
> Hi!
> great idea!!!!!!!!
> im desperatly looking for AVB (IEEE 802.1BA) adc/dac s. this could be THE
> solution...

Hi Christoph

I'm unfamiliar with AV bridging--what do you use it for?

>
>> 1.  Modules for dac and adc with on-board identifiers  (mixed-signal
>> design)
>> 2.  A FPGA-based programmable system board with connectors for
>> respective modules (high-frequency circuit design)
>> 3.  FPGA code for buffers, clocks, and device discovery (VHDL/Verilog
>> programming)
>
> Did you have a look at opencores.org for IPs?
> I2C and I2S cores are available at opencores.org

That seems pretty interesting, but it could be more streamlined.  RISC
is (I think) overkill, but it wouldn't hurt to study it :)
http://opencores.org/project,i2c
>
>> 4.  Data transport modules (FPGA code plus hardware design), could be
>> USB, FW, ETH, PCI, wireless, etc...
>
> Perhapes two transport modules?
> like FW and ETH -> AudioVideoBridging? (they share the same codec
> implementation: iec61883-x)
> if you like to use it with a laptop, use FW. if you have a little
> projectstudio with seperated recording/control room situation it would
> integrate in an AVB environment.
> The DAW would need to have an AVB ready NIC, means PTP HW timestamping
> between PHY and MAC.
> At the moment im working on a linux implementaion for AVB, perhaps this is
> what i could contribute?
> my implementation will be jack a application

Gigabit ethernet has become ubiquitous on new hardware at about the
same time that firewire has become rare... I think mostly we could use
just one interface at a time---but reuse a lot of the code and
hardware.
...
>
> There is an AVB properitarien IP for FPGA, apparently 25000€.
> => there would be the need for opensource implementation.
> so i would like to contribute my AVB stuff if/when i got it working ->
> estimated deadline july 2012...
> after that i would like to have a look at an open AVB IP for FPGA.

Isn't it crazy how expensive some of the FPGA boards and software IP
becomes?  It's like it's own little anti-competitive niche market
*cough* DoD *cough*

While the FPGA's themselves aren't prohibitively expensive, the rapid
development boards+software are.