ors" which are processors that are part of the silicon and they run at native speeds, in the 750-1500MHz range. Xilinx previously had used PowerPC, but now was promoting a new family called Zynq which included an ARM processor. The world has largely abandoned PowerPC and MIPS and settled on ARM for embedded licensed processors. We liked the ARM architecture and the toolset and toolchain were rich -- we were sure that ARM would be around for a while. But Zynq was expensive and and brand new.
We talked with Intel who had a line of embedded processors and we liked those OK, but there seemed to be a lot of interface work required with them. We moved to talking with Freescale and TI because each had DSP processors which we felt would give us a lot more power since we were going to be doing DSP. TI was a full generation ahead of Freescale at the time so we got serious about TI. TI had better raw compute power and we really liked where they were going so we picked TI. We also had a good relationship with TI and felt like that would help us. All the while that Gerald and I were visiting with these companies, we would walk out of the meetings and talk about what we could do for ham radio with each solution.
We ended up picking Xilinx and TI for the computing parts. At this point, I had a pretty good idea what the software architecture was going to look like and so Eric and I started talking about the software architecture in detail. Our codename for the radio was MICROBURST and SmartSDR's codename was SMOOTHLAKE. Eventually, SMOOTHLAKE got the name SmartSDR and I think it was from Klaus, DK7XL, our EU representative.
The path we picked was filled with peril and we received advice that we could easily kill the company with the decision we had made. We knew that if we could do this, we would advance the technology in ham radio in one huge leap. Gerald asked the team if we were committed to making this radio happen. This is one of those moments where someone looks you in the eye and you know that this is a real commitment -- if we failed, there would be grave financial consequences for us and our employees. Everyone made a commitment and we got to work.
Gerald started working on the hardware design and picked other key parts including the DAC, the Codec, power supplies, etc. As I recall, Eric and I started coding before we had hardware. Gerald did most of the PCB design and layout and I did some of the mind-numbing layout work on the ADC, DAC and DDR3 memory. At some point we got a working PCB and we started the effort to bring up the processor. Hardest. Thing. Ever. I'll spare you the details, but Eric and I spent about 3-4 months bringing up the processor. I am so much smarter now than I was then.
At this point, Eric and I sequestered ourselves and wrote the core foundations of SmartSDR. We spent hours at my house in the lab writing software and we would periodically call in and let everyone know what we were able to achieve. Gerald was off designing the PA while we worked software magic. Bob McGwier, N4HY, visited a couple of times for about a week at a time and helped us write DSP software. We would literally get up at dawn, eat breakfast and then go into the lab and work, emerging only for food. We had only one or two working prototypes at the time. At one point we decided to pull a joke on Gerald. I rigged a couple of 1/4W resistors to a 12V supply where they would sink about 5W and we taped it to the bench. We called Gerald on FaceTime and Bob was supposed to tell Gerald what we had working. At a key point, I flipped the switch and smoke came billowing out from under the prototype and Bob feigned despair that the prototype was destroyed to tease Gerald. As it turns out, we had a communications issue and all that didn't make it to Gerald so he was spared the grief, but we all got a laugh out of it. My bench still has a small black scar from the resistors ;-). I don't know how many hours a week we were working, but it was a lot. We would get to the point in the evening where the code we were writing didn't make sense and we wou