OP7000V2 System Description

Introduction

The OP7000V2 is a rackmount modular chassis designed for use in industrial environments combining support for up to nine high-end FPGA modules and management of up to 256 channels of conditioned I/Os.

The versatility of both its features and design make it particularly well-suited for high-speed distributed simulations on multiple FPGA modules, as well as for applications requiring compact and configurable I/O conditioning.

Typical applications benefiting from the performance of this platform are Multilevel modular converter (MMC) configurations, More Electrical Aircraft (MEA) design, and testing, and train controller validation, to name just a few.

The OP7000V2 design maintains the identical and unique platform design as the first version of the OP7000, in that both are built around a 16 I/O-slot and nine FPGA-slot mid-plane. The supporting set of I/O conditioning cards, the OP7800 family, was designed specifically for the OP7000 platform to address the demands of the wide range of applications targeted and is thus fully compatible with the OP7000V2.

The OP7170 FPGA modules of the OP7000V2, however, are much more powerful than the former OP7161 modules, as they are powered with the high-performance Xilinx Kintex-7 410T FPGA.

Typical Use Cases

The OP7170 FPGA module is flexible enough for users to use the OP7000V2 either as a PCIe expansion chassis (as with its predecessor), or configured for use in a MuSE (OPAL-RT's MUlti-System Expansion link) network, or as a combination of both, as shown in the table below.

The MuSE option, using optical fiber links between the chassis and the simulator, not only improves the ease of use of the platform but also ensures better isolation of the simulator from the OP7000V2 chassis, which can be placed close to the external device under test. 

FPGA Configuration

The OP7000V2 chassis accepts two types of FPGA modules both powered with the Xilinx Kintex-7 410T chip. Although they share the same PCB, they serve different purposes.

For this reason, they are programmed with different bitstream files:

• the Primary FPGA, OP7170-1, is mandatory and is installed in the middle of the front section of the chassis. This FPGA module manages the communications with the simulator as well as all I/O channels,
• the Secondary FPGA, OP7170-2, (under development), is optional. It installs in the odd-numbered front slots of the chassis. Up to 8 OP7170-2 can thus be installed, in slots 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15.

Both the Primary and Secondary FPGAs hold four SFP sockets on their front plate that can be used to connect either MuSE remote chassis, or external devices (e.g., amplifiers, controllers).

I/O Configuration

The 256 I/O channels are controlled from the Primary FPGA. They are accessible via 16 slots of the mid-plane, which can be accessed both from the front and the back sections of the chassis. For this reason, the front and back I/O card configurations have some dependencies.

The slots in the front are used to install either:

• the OP7220 carrier card for analog input and output conversion modules. This card also holds four RJ45 connectors on its front plate, for monitoring of these signals.
• the front digital monitoring card OP7353, which also holds four RJ45 connectors, and which is used to monitor the 16 channels of the corresponding back slot connectors when a digital I/O card is installed in this back slot.

The slots in the back are used to install:

• analog I/O conditioning cards: When they are installed in a back slot, these cards complement the analog I/O module installed in the corresponding front slot. 
• digital I/O management cards: The set of cards available allows to acquire or produce different types of digital signals, and use different types of connectors (DB37, optical fiber transceivers)

These cards are described in the OP7000 IO Modules section.

With all these FPGA and I/O cards featured, an infinite number of configurations are possible with the OP7000V2.