Here is a visual walkthrough of the features on the TEBF0808 UltraITX+ Baseboard for Trenz Electronic TE080X UltraSOM+, presented by Paul KB5MU and Michelle W5NYV.
These stations are available to the community from Open Research Institute’s Remote Labs. We currently have two sets of gear and are procuring two more.
The Trenz platform allows for full access to the FPGA, power reduction work, and thermal modeling. All are extremely important for space applications.
We also have the Xilinx development board for the Ultrascale, for preliminary work.
The FPGA module goes in the lower left empty square with the high-density connectors.
The FPGA module has a heat sink, called a heatspreader, that is a machined metal plate. It attaches to the FPGA module with screws. However, it needs an intermediate layer to conduct the heat from the FPGA to the metal plate. The plate is designed to fit many different modules, and there’s a gap between the metal plate and the top of the components on the FPGA module.
This gap is usually filled with a specific gap-filling thermal paste.
Which happens to be out of stock, all over the world.
So, of the four stations we’re settting up, one will be fitted with a thermal adhesive film. This comes in sheets and can be cut to size. It can be used for space, so as we dial down the power consumption with code adjustments, we can measure the thermal results with something that is appropriate for the space mission.
The other three will get gap-filling goo directly from Trenz. This is the only way to preserve the warranty on these expensive modules, so it’s not a bad choice. And, this gives us something to compare the sheet against. We’ll test both in thermal modeling and chamber.
-Michelle W5NYV