Daily Image
13-10-2014
Working in Shifts for UniBoard^2
| Submitter: | Andre Gunst |
| Description: | Currently, Gijs Schoonderbeek and Sjouke Zwier are busy with the lay-out of the UniBoard^2 Printed Circuit Board (PCB). On the prototype, four 20 nm Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are integrated. These chips will come fresh from the chip "bakery" (foundry) and are the latest to emerge on the market. The board will be able to process data at a rate of 1 Tbps (Tera bit per second!), which can be compared with transporting the data of 27 DVDs per second. Although the number of FPGAs is halved compared with the first version of UniBoard, the complexity is severe due to a large number of transceivers that need to be routed. The total number of transceiver lines to be connected is 696. The data rate of each line is at least 10 Gbps. Beside these transceiver lines, the board also needs connections to accommodate DDR4 memory modules. These devices will also be available just in time. The total number of connections on the UniBoard^2 is ~10,000. To route all those connections, multiple PCB layers are necessary. The total amount of layers for UniBoard^2 will be 18. In order to meet the deadline of the UniBoard^2 project, Gijs and Sjouke have volunteered to work in shifts. One week Gijs works during the day and Sjouke from 16:00 till midnight, while the other week the schedule is flipped. Another magnificent example of their prewar level of commitment. UniBoard^2 is a European collaboration led by JIVE, and funded by Radionet3. ASTRON is responsible for the board design and, in cooperation with JIVE, for the development of the testing firmware. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
| Tweet |  |