[libre-riscv-dev] daily kan-ban update 22may2020

[Cesar Strauss]

Hi Cole and all,

On 05/22/2020 16:10, Cole Poirier wrote:
> Would you mind giving a one line description here of what Cesar does?
> I'd be interested to know as well.

I work in a research institute, on data acquisition and control of
scientific instruments for astronomy.

Let me expand a bit on that.

Some of the projects I'm involved, past and present:

1) Microwave receivers for a 14 m radio telescope.
2) Control of a 26-element radio interferometer array
3) Image acquisition for an infrared camera
4) Data acquisition for a X-ray detector in a stratospheric balloon.
5) Miniaturized version of the above, to fly on a nano-satellite (2U
cubesat)
6) Spherical-mass gravitational wave detector

Some phenomena that the scientists observe with the above:

1) Molecular clouds and star formation
2) Variability in the active nuclei of galaxies (quasars)
3) Accretion disks around black holes
4) Gamma ray burst
5) Solar flares and coronal mass ejections
6) Space weather

Some technologies I use:

1) Data acquisition and remote control of voltmeters and spectrum
analyzers via RS-232, GPIB, Ethernet and USB
2) Multi-channel analog data acquisition boards
3) Microcontrollers like 8051, PIC, ARM Cortex, Arduinos
4) FPGA for glue logic, data acquisition and signal processing
5) Single-board computer
6) Cryogenics for low noise temperature radio frequency receivers

Software tools:

1) GCC, C/C++ compiler for the PC and some microcontrollers
2) SDCC, C compiler for smaller microcontrollers
3) Icarus Verilog for FPGA simulation
4) gEDA/gaf, Pcb and Gerbv for PCB design
5) Python, for quick prototyping, data processing, plotting.
6) R, Octave, for data processing

My motivation to participate in Libre-SOC:

A libre, supported, fully documented SoC, free of proprietary drivers,
firmware and bootloaders, that I can trust to use in my workstation,
server and as building blocks of scientific instruments.

Regards,

Cesar