Dual Link JESD setup for independent DAC cores

Hi Sourav,

Link 0 corresponds to DAC0 and link1 to DAC1. The physical lanes can be optionally remapped to different logical lanes, of which the first half will correspond to link0 and the second half to link1, as described in the screenshot below. 

Your JESD mode will be duplicated per link. If you use mode 4 each link uses 4 lanes and 2 complex channels per DAC. You can set the NCOs/gain/etc differently for each link datapath, but the I/Q data is the same for both. Is that what you are asking?

Hi KB, 

just a little clarification needed, if I use single link for mode 8/9 having L=4, then L=4 corresponds to both DAC0 & DAC1, correct? It doesn't gets divided like 2 for each DAC cores as it happens for dual link case u mentioned above?

Hi Sourav,

The modulator switch config shown above is a special setup case. Generally dual link means you duplicate the jesd mode for each dac (i.e. you have 8 total available lanes, so in mode 8 you would give 4 lanes and M=2 (1 channel) to dac0 and 4 lanes M=2 to dac1, so the basically you duplicate mode 8 for each dac. For the case shown above you have a dual link, but the two main datapaths are summed together and sent to one dac core. I wouldn't worry about that setup for now if you don't need it.

In general, if you have single link you are running dac0 only, regardless of your jesd mode. Any mode that uses L>4 can ONLY be single link, since you only have 8 available serdes lanes (so if you had an L=8 mode, you can only have 1 link). If you use mode 8 in single link then L=4 corresponds to DAC0 (all data on the 4 lanes goes into the dac0 main datapath and there is no data in the dac1 datapath). It is not split between the dacs. If you ran mode 8 dual link, lanes 0-3 go to dac0 and lanes 4-7 go to dac1. Does that make sense?

Hi Kberry,

I understood the points you have mentioned above, its pretty much clear through! So with Single link I can use either DAC0 or DAC1 correct? I mean as you said all the data on the 4 lanes will go into the main datapath on either DAC0 or DAC1 based on the CHANNEL_PAGE reg(0x008) selection.

One more thing, I wanted to use NCO ONLY mode, for that keeping the DC tone reg(0x148 & 0x149 = 0x50ff which the datasheet suggests) will be fine ?  I want to use(mux) DC input to the final DDS(NCO) & program the NCO for 1GHz (FTW, reg 0x114 - 0x119) & disable NCO calibration.This configuration wise would be fine ,correct?

Also, the register 0x130Bit[0], is used to enable/disable the DC test tone mode. This is common to both channel & main datapath correct?(Since this configuration is written in DDSC_DATAPATH_CFG section and there is nothing mentioned about it in DDSM_DATAPATH_CFG , so I had a doubt).

Thanks in advance.

Hi Kberry,

I understood the points you have mentioned above, its pretty much clear through! So with Single link I can use either DAC0 or DAC1 correct? I mean as you said all the data on the 4 lanes will go into the main datapath on either DAC0 or DAC1 based on the CHANNEL_PAGE reg(0x008) selection.

One more thing, I wanted to use NCO ONLY mode, for that keeping the DC tone reg(0x148 & 0x149 = 0x50ff which the datasheet suggests) will be fine ?  I want to use(mux) DC input to the final DDS(NCO) & program the NCO for 1GHz (FTW, reg 0x114 - 0x119) & disable NCO calibration.This configuration wise would be fine ,correct?

Also, the register 0x130Bit[0], is used to enable/disable the DC test tone mode. This is common to both channel & main datapath correct?(Since this configuration is written in DDSC_DATAPATH_CFG section and there is nothing mentioned about it in DDSM_DATAPATH_CFG , so I had a doubt).

Thanks in advance.

Hi Sourav,

Single link defaults to DAC0.To change this you need to use the crossbar switch, as I noted in my first response. You can read about that on pg 41 of the datasheet.

Yes, 0x50FF is fine for a full scale DC tone amplitude. Your configuration sounds fine. To use the main NCO on datapath 0 you need to page channel 0 (W 0x01 to 0x008) before you write your DC amplitude word to 0x148/149. Then page main dac0 (W 0x40 to 0x008) and set bit 1 of 0x1E6 to enable muxing the tone into the main datapath. 0x130 bit 0 is paged by the channel page bits and muxes the DC tone into the channel datapaths, which you do not want since you are muxing in at the main datapath instead using 0x1E6, so you should not set this bit.

Okay, I was surrounded with the thought that can we use DAC1 also(separately) with single link, looks like we can using the crossbar settings by writing 0x30A = 0x08 & 0x30B = 0x26.(Please check the values once).

But I will have only 4 physical lanes coming out of XCVR(from FPGA) for Mode 8 configuration, correct?(It does not matter if we are using Single/Dual link), just writing to the above reg to bring that change for DAC1.

About NCO configuration, do we need to write 0x01 to 0x008 first, I thought that since we are bypassing channel datapath completely, so writing only 0x40 to 0x008 would do that job for using Main Datapath.(Is it like we have to select the channel which leads to main datapath, even though we are bypassing it, because the flow of data from SERDES to DAC core is anyway passing through both channel & main datapaths).

Thanks in advance.

Hi Sourav, I saw you just posted a related question which I am looking at, but regarding these questions:

1) If you use single link for mode 8 you will have 4 physical lanes; if you use dual link you will have 8 physical lanes. You can always use the xbar to switch which physical lanes correspond to which logical lanes (and thus to which dac core). So with dual link you basically have two sets of L=4, so 8 total lanes, which by default have phy 0-3 --> logical 0-3 and phy 4-7 --> logical 4-7. You could switch these if you want in the xbar. If you do single link the data will always go out on phy 0-3. By default this maps to logical 0-3 i.e. DAC0 core, but you can mux it to logical 4-7 for DAC1. 

2) Yes, even with the channels bypassed you have to page channel 0 for main NCO 0 and channel 1 for main NCO 1 when injecting the DC tone. This is because the dc amplitude word is shared between the channel and main datapaths.

While operating for NCO only mode, can you tell me if there is any proper calculation for DC word Full scale?

Because we are getting variations in power level of DAC core output, we wanted to be sure if FPGA is causing something, but we got the same power level(dBm) when tried in NCO only mode.

I wanted to know if I can try with different values for DC scale, but I am not aware what parameters we need to take care to calculate it and how does it affect if I change it. Currently I am using 50FF(Full scale) which is default.