SKA Low CBF

TANGO device servers that perform monitor and control functions for the SKA-Low telescope’s Correlator and Beam-Former.

Documentation

Documentation Status

Documentation for this project can be found in the docs folder, or browsed in the SKA development portal:

Project Avatar (Repository Icon)

Control panel icons created by Eucalyp - Flaticon

Developer’s Guide

  • The Makefiles here are inherited from ska-cicd-makefile.

    • Refer to docs at that repo, or use make help for details.

    • This link is via a git submodule, so use the --recursive flag when cloning this repository, or run git submodule update --init --recursive afterwards.

  • A pre-commit config is provided to try and format your code before it gets rejected by the CI pipeline lint checkers.

    • Install pre-commit - pip3 install pre-commit

    • Activate the pre-commit checks for the repo - pre-commit install

    • From now on your commits will be formatted automatically. Note that you have to add & commit again any files changed by pre-commit.

  • A git hook is provided that may help comply with SKA commit message rules. You can install the hook with cp -s "$(pwd)/resources/git-hooks"/* .git/hooks. Once installed, the hook will insert commit messages to match the JIRA ticket from the branch name. e.g. On branch perentie-1350-new-base-classes:

ska-low-cbf$ git commit -m "Add git hook note to README"
Branch perentie-1350-new-base-classes
Inserting PERENTIE-1350 prefix
[perentie-1350-new-base-classes 3886657] PERENTIE-1350 Add git hook note to README
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)

You can see the modified message above, and confirming via the git log:

ska-low-cbf$ git log -n 1 --oneline
3886657 (HEAD -> perentie-1350-new-base-classes) PERENTIE-1350 Add git hook note to README

Deploying to Low PSI

Makefile variables PSI_SERVER and PSI_LOW can be used to activate one of the Low PSI values files (there is one per FPGA host server).

e.g. to use psi-perentie2:

$ PSI_SERVER=perentie2 make k8s-install-chart

The server name can be specified either with or without the psi- prefix - i.e. psi-perentie2 and perentie2 are equivalent.

Setting a value for PSI_SERVER implies that PSI_LOW should be active. If you set PSI_LOW without specifying a server, it will default to perentie1.

Tests

  • tests/unit contains tests for our ‘business logic’ (the non-Tango code), as well as basic Tango device tests that don’t need to interact with other devices. Allocation algorithm tests print some debug files:

    • Allocation visualisations in files dbg-alloc …

    • Switch routing table entries for LFAA->Alveo routes in files rules- …

    • Switch routing table entries for Alveo->PST server in files rules-pst …

    • VCT table entries for each used alveo in files vct_ …

  • tests/integration contains tests that involve interaction between multiple Tango devices.

Health Monitoring

Alveos not allocated to a Subarray won’t be reporting FPGA register based health conditions (current as of 12-Jul-2023).