Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC News
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
26-08-2011: Absolutely ready for production!
The modification for a better mechanical fit has been made and halogen-PCBs will be ordered to start the first series production of SPEC boards. A serious piece of automated test software has been made that will check all soldered connections on the board and that will measure the different supply voltages.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
22-08-2011: V3 ready, let's go for V4!
The V3 of the design was ready for production on 22 July. We’d like to produce 70 of those cards of this version, apart from the fact that a user at GSI just found a mechanical problem that could appear with a certain combination of SFP plugin and PC type.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
01-07-2011: V2 boards tested
Three V2 boards have been received. One has already passed the full production suite, two others have only received a very short test (and passed). This means that this version can be used to start a series production.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
31-05-2011: Production test software working
For the production of the SPEC cards specific production software has been written and demonstrated. This software provides a simple go/no-go interface with logging facilities to easily find production errors. The software is written in Python and uses a CERN-written test environment called Bakara.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
13-05-2011: V2 ready. Pre-production boards will be built.
The layout of the V2 of the SPEC board is ready. It is an improvement of version “1.1”. We will build 3 of these pre-production boards before we will order 70 boards.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
11-05-2011: Design review of V2 held
Five engineers have reviewed version 2 of the SPEC card. Many small changes have been made to make the board better producable. E.g. instead of 23 resistor values only 10 will be needed.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
24-02-2011: Design review of "V1.1" on 1/3/11
The debugging of the SPEC card is going really fine: all active components are fully tested, and most of the slow connections on the FMC connectors are tested with the fine delay module.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
First DMA transfer to/from DDR3
A first DMA transfer to the SPEC DDR3 and back to the host has been done this morning. The DDR3 interface seems to work well, but more exhaustive test of the DDR3 interface are still to be done.
Simple PCIe FMC carrier SPEC
19-01-2011: 3 SPEC cards arrived at CERN
Three cards arrived at CERN. After delivery to our offices they will immediately be powered on.