[time-nuts] GPSDO with a RaspberryPi

[Javier Serrano]

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 12:47 AM, Azelio Boriani
<azelio.boriani at screen.it> wrote:
> Javier:
> the 24bit counter is clocked only by the 10MHz and is running continuously,
> the PPS is the most important signal. The LSClock is the clock for the
> latch: this latch has to be clocked to shift out its content serially and
> has to be loaded with the PPS from the GPS (PPSReference). I see no other
> way to deal with this other than selecting the two clock sources for this
> latch/shifter.

You need two registers:

- One that takes a snapshot of the counter value when the
Clk10MHz-synchronized PPSReference arrives.
- One that gets read out using SClockIn.

Ideally you would sequence things so:
- Once the snapshot is taken you drive a data valid strobe
(Clk10MHz-clocked) which gets detected in the SClockIN domain.
- Then the snapshot is transferred to the second register mentioned
above, using SClockIn.
- Only then it gets read out, using SClockIn.

> When the chip select (CSelect) line is high, the PPS is
> selected as a clock, when the CSelect is low (SPI trying to read) the
> SClockIN is selected as a clock. I know it is not a good practice to use
> gated clocks but at times it seems there is no way out and the CPLD is only
> 64 cells wide...

I am sorry I did not have time to read the whole material. I just went
quickly through the VHDL. Seen in isolation, there are things that can
go wrong if you don't control when the read-out happens, e.g. if
CSelect goes to '1' in the middle of the PPSReference pulse you will
have a spurious rising edge and a bad time stamp. But if you control
when CSelect goes high then this could be a non-issue. I also did not
consider CPLD gates available.

Anyway, the biggest problem I see with the code as it stands is the
clocking of the 24-bit counter output with an asynchronous signal
(PPSReference). I think that really needs to be fixed in any event.

Cheers,

Javier