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Paweł K edited this page Nov 24, 2021 · 10 revisions

Sayma is a high-performance Smart Arbitrary Waveform Generator providing 8 channels of 16-bit high-speed DACs. It is part of the Sinara family of ARTIQ hardware originally designed for use in AMO/quantum physics.

Documentation is here.

Sayma consists of several PCBs housed in a MicroTCA (uTCA) rack.

  • The Sayma AMC PCB houses high-speed digital logic (eg main FPGA, SDRAM).
  • The Sayma RTM PCB houses data converters (DACs) and an auxiliary FPGA. The analog signal path for the DACs are housed on two Analog Front End (AFE) daughter card PCBs.
  • The AFE daughter cards have an FMC form factor and feature a large number of parallel digital IO lines that can, optionally, support synchronous ADCs. The default AFE PCB is BaseMod. Each BaseMod PCB provides 4 channels of phase-coherent RF as well as 4 analog inputs (LTC2324-16 16-bit, up to 5 MS/s). The MixMod is another AFE in development for microwave up-conversion applications.

The Sayma RTM DACs are AD9154. These DAC chips support sample rates up to 1.2 GSPS with a DAC clock of up to 2.4 GHz (2x interpolation). Operational of the AD9154 DACs in the context of Sayma (eg sample rate) depend on how the system's Smart Arbitrary is configured.

Syama is currently in v2.0 prototyping. It can be ordered from Creotech. The schematics are here for the AMC and here for the RTM.

Using Sayma With ARTIQ

While Sayma can can operate as the ARTIQ core device, it is typically used as a DRTIO satellite with either Kasli (via optical fibre) or Metlino (via a uTCA rack backplane or optical fibre) acting as the core device. Mounting options include uTCA racks, such as the NAT Native R9, or low-cost single-unit enclosures.

Sayma is flashed as usual using artiq_flash. Only the AMC FPGA needs to be flashed as the AMC programs the RTM FPGA at each boot.

Basic connections

The DIP switches on Sayma AMC (located at the edge of the board just above the FPGA) must be set to 0110 (i.e. the middle two set to "on" the outer two set to "off") to ensure correct boot.

To use Sayma in an R9 chassis ... TO DO

For debugging, it's often useful to operate Sayma on a bench. In this case:

  • Provide 12V (5A) to 4-pin AXI (Mini-Fit Jr.) connector J9 on Sayma AMC
  • Connect the USB on Sayma AMC to the PC for flashing/UART diagnostics
  • Connect a Sayma AMC to the core device via SFP on the AMC front panel

V2.0 Production

Serial Numbers and PCB modifications post manufacture are here.

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