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Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 11:24 pm
by f_petrini
Today I received five brand new XC-2 boards and created a sweet little network consisting of six XC-2 boards. (The sixth board is not shown in the picture)

Everything works great but I soon realized that managing six XTAGs (running code / flashing) is somewhat tiresome to do manually. ;)
I had to create a tool to automatically execute xrun/xflash targeting each board in sequence. It takes about 20 seconds to xrun all boards.
I tried to program the boards in parallel but that did not work well. Most of the time four or five out of the six xrun processes crashed so I guess it's not supported. :D

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Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:45 am
by Berni
Now thats a lot of XC-2 boards. So what have you got them to do til now?

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:23 am
by leon_heller
A client of mine is interested in using XMOS devices for a low-cost Ethernet hub. I got two XC-2s to check if it is feasible.

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 2:17 pm
by otitov
nice! skynet is getting closer and closer

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:31 pm
by shawn
make for a smart switch too..

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:54 am
by f_petrini
Berni wrote:Now thats a lot of XC-2 boards. So what have you got them to do til now?
For the current project I'm feeding each board UDP packets containing 72 individual data streams (a total of ~5.2Mbit/s) which are output (async serial) on the 72 header pins. That's a total of 432 serial channels... 8-)

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 3:23 pm
by Folknology
I've got to ask, why do you need 432 serial channels?

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 3:27 pm
by otitov
is it a next generation led cube? let´s say 9x9x9?

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 4:10 pm
by f_petrini
Close... It's for three 10x10x10 cubes. ;)

The cube design has 10 LEDs on each channel so (only) 10*10*3 channels are needed but the boards and software handles the full 430 channels without problems.

Re: Fun with XC-2 network

Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 4:49 pm
by otitov
now I even afraid to ask - are these rgb leds?