Minutes of the CERN uFIP insourcing project kick-off meeting
Present: Quentin King, Bruno Puccio, Ben Todd, Fabio Formenti, Raymond Brun, Erik van der Bij, Gonzalo Fernández Peñacoba, Javier Serrano.
Javier introduced the project and asked if there were any comments on the project launching (memo). The most important change with respect to the original idea is that all design work related to the master is out of the scope of this project, mainly for manpower and urgency reasons.
The usage of OHR as a basis for collaboration was agreed. This will also
make it easier to involve external actors if/when needed.
Concerning the preliminary proposal for a split in work
packages, Quentin signaled that it's early to request
things like complete uFIP compatibility as is done in the description of
WP5. Overall, however, the split in work packages seems reasonable.
After the work of Ben and Erik on WP1, we are almost sure that a CERN
re-write of uFIP from (almost) scratch will be the preferred option.
This means WP4 would be abandoned in favor of WP5.
Fabio said that we could ask Actel about the possibilities regarding hard (geographically locked) macros for FPGAs. It looks like this is a subject to be discussed under WP3 (Functional specs): shall the project deliver both a core and a rad-tested implementation (i.e. a fixed instance of the core in a chip with noting else in it)? Another question for WP3, coming from Quentin, is: shall we have more than one variant, e.g. a simple stand-alone core and a more complicated one for micro-controlled access?
Another important thing to be clarified in the future is the relationship between this project and the radiation tests organized by Thijs Wijnands in CNGS. Clearly, the project needs some of the information that will come out of these tests, but the tests themselves are outside of the scope of this project. However, the situation is less clear if we identify a need for some tests which will not happen naturally (i.e. as a result of the individual needs of FIP users to test their own designs). In that case, we could define a specific WP for the project to produce some HW and test it.
Javier made it an important point to clearly identify the roles of all the actors in this project, mainly because there can be a confusion with people outside CO treating CO as a single unit. In this project there are:
- Technology providers. This used to be Alstom and now it will be BE-CO-HT, represented by Erik and Javier. But BE-CO-HT can't do the insourcing alone, so this project is fortunate enough to have FIP users participating in it as well.
- FIP users, i.e. people who have a problem to solve and have used FIP
for it. This includes PO, CRG, MPE, but also BE-CO-FE (represented
by Raymond), which uses cards such as repeaters and FIPDiag in order
to fulfill their mandate of distributing !WorldFIP around the
different installations.
To finish with the debate of roles, it would also be beneficial to make clear the role of the radiation testing team: in principle they are there to facilitate the task of the FIP users in testing their designs, nothing else.
It was also agreed that one meeting every two weeks or so seems reasonable to begin with.
Finally, one comment from Gonzalo after the meeting: we have focused a lot on uFIP, but what's at stake is really the !FieldDrive-uFIP combination. We should find out more about what's inside the FieldDrive, how rad-hard it is and whether some of its digital functionality should not go into the uFIP replacement we will design. This would open the door to using standard RS485 transceivers with no intelligence inside. To be explored.
Javier Serrano, Mar 2009