Table of Contents

Description

The OP4610XG is an affordable compact mid-range simulator with up to 128 fast I/O channels with signal conditioning, 12 channels for RS422 or optional low-speed fiber-optic communication, 4 high-speed communication ports (SFPs), and 2 free PCIe slots for optional I/O cards.

The integration of a high-end AMD™ Ryzen™ 6-core processor with powerful Xilinx® Kintex®-7 FPGA provides great simulation power and sub-microsecond simulation time steps to maximize the accuracy of fast power electronic systems. It is fully compatible with RT-LAB and HYPERSIM.

The OP4610XG is designed to be used either as a desktop, shelf top, or mounted in a standard 19″ rack.

Simulator Architecture

The diagram below shows the general architecture of the OP4610XG simulator.

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The front of the chassis provides access to the SFP ports and the synchronization connectors,
The back of the chassis provides access to the DB37 and DB9 I/O connectors, computer ports, target power cable, and main power switch.

The main housing is divided into two sections, each with a specific purpose:

• The lower section of the chassis contains a powerful target computer that can be added to a network of simulators or can be used standalone. It is used to run simulations built with OPAL-RT’s RT-LAB or HYPERSIM software simulation platform and includes the following features:

  • MicroATX motherboard

  • OPAL-RTLinux real-time operating system

  • AMD™ Ryzen™ 6 cores, 3.8 GHz CPU

  • 16 GB of DRAM

  • 250 GB SSD disk

  • 2 free PCIe slots

  • Standard computer ports. See section OP4610XG Simulator Specifications for details.

• The upper section contains the high-speed FPGA and the I/O modules with conditioning for up to 128 I/Os. It includes:

  • A Xilinx® Kintex®-7 FPGA programmable from the target computer via PCIe. The FPGA is used to execute models designed with the OPAL-RT RT-XSG toolbox, manage the I/O lines and execute embedded FPGA-based simulations. It exchanges data with the real-time simulations running on the target computer CPUs via the PCIe link, an 8-slot flat carrier board capable of connecting any combination of up to 4 digital or analog conditioning modules.

  • Each module controls 16 or 32 I/O  analog or digital channels, for a total of up to 128 channels.

  • 4 SFP ports for high-speed communication with other FPGA-based systems or with external devices. The standard communication protocols available with the OP4610XG are based on Xilinx Aurora (1 to 5 Gbps). Other protocols, such as the Gigabit Ethernet, can also be implemented.

    • These SFP ports can be used to expand the simulator I/O capability using OPAL-RT’s Multi-System Expansion link (MuSE): each port can be connected to one OPAL-RT remote I/O unit (OP4520, OP5607, OP5650, OP5705-IO, OP5707-IO), effectively increasing the simulator I/O capability to a maximum of 1024 channels.

    • SFP ports not used for MuSE remain compatible with the legacy Generic Aurora link. The MuSE link is compatible with OPAL-RT boards' I/O management architecture.

Modular configuration

The OP4610XG can contain up to 4 I/O modules (colored in green), according to the user's needs.
All I/O modules are factory installed. Changes can only be made by OPAL-RT, its affiliates and certified distributors. Opening the simulator case will automatically void the warranty.
Many combinations of compatible I/O modules are possible. Please refer to the Compatibility chart. Check for a typical configuration in the section below.

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Typical I/O modules configuration

This is typical I/O modules configuration and is provided as an example only.

This example shows the use of two (2) OP5330-3 16 Channels Analog Output Modules (total of 32 analog output channels), one (1) OP5342 6 Analog Channel Input module and one (1) OP5369 32 Digital I/O module.

The OP4610XG offers two types of synchronization, either LVDS or fiber-optic, making it easier to synchronize with any OPAL-RT device.