Atmel SpaceWire Router SpW-10X - Manual (Page 17)

Ref.: UoD_SpW-10X_
UserManual
Issue: 3.4
SpW-10X
SpaceWire Router
User Manual Date: 11 th
July 2008
Preliminary
17
2.2 NODE INTERFACE
The SpaceWire Router has two external ports which enable the device to be used as a node interface.
The equipment to be connected to the SpaceWire network is attached to one or both external ports.
One or more SpaceWire ports are used to provide the connection into the SpaceWire network.
Unused SpaceWire ports may be disabled and their outputs deactivated to save power. In this
arrangement configuration of the routing tables and other parameters may be done by sending
configuration packets from the local host via an external port or from a remote network manager via a
SpaceWire port.
User FPGA
or
Processor
SpW‐10X
Router
Active
SpaceWire
Links
Disabled
SpaceWire
Links
SpaceWire Node
Figure 2-2 Node Interface
In Figure 2-2 a SpW-10X router is used as an interface to a user FPGA or processor, which may be
part of a SpaceWire enabled instrument, control processor or other sub-system. The interface to the
user FPGA or processor is via the external FIFO ports of the SpW-10X router. Only three SpaceWire
links are needed for this SpaceWire node so the other five links are disabled to save power.
2.3 EMBEDDED ROUTER
The SpaceWire Router device can also be used to provide a node with an embedded router. In this
case the external ports are used to provide the local connections to the node and the SpaceWire ports
are used to make connections to other ports in the network. The difference between this configuration
and that of section 2.2 is just a conceptual one with the Node interface configuration normally using
fewer SpaceWire ports than the Embedded Router configuration.