Can XMOS....

[renzen]

Hi,
At the moment, my main project is oscilloscope. I know, DS1102E is only about 400USD. But I prefer to make it by my self and learn something.
I already succeed make oscilloscope below 1msps with microcontroller. Higher sample rate, I think need shift register, fifo, or something like that to store the data. Many people move to FPGA for their high sample rate oscilloscope project.
So, is it possible use XMOS instead FPGA for my oscilloscope project? For now, I want to make 100msps or 500msps oscilloscope. Maybe higher in the future.
I would really appreciate any feedback about XMOS. Thank you.

 

[kubeek]

A 100msps scope would need to use some fast DRAM like DDR to store the samples. Not entirely sure what XMOS is, but it seems to be a brand of microcontrollers, no idea about their specs but stuffing nonstop 100 million samples per second into RAM is not an easy task and I doubt that you can do that without some dedicated logic aka FPGA or ASIC. The micro would be spending all its power just managing the storing of the samples and will not have any cpu time left to do displaying or anything else.

 

[ronsimpson]

This is not a simple project. I have done it so.....
If I were to do it again.....
Look at this memory AL422. It is in a simple 28 pin package. There is no need for address counters, that is all done inside. 393,216x8 memory (3meg) clocks at 50mhz. You can use two running in parallel to get 100mhz.
There is also a 4meg version that runs at 80 or 40mhz and a 128meg version that runs at 150/75mhz but the 128 pin package is a problem.

I would start with one AL422 running at 50mhz because that is simple.

For the micro; I would use a Raspberry Pie, connected to a LCD monitor.

 

[renzen]

Thanks Ron, I'll try your suggestion.