Guide#

UltraZohm is a powerful real-time computation unit
The UltraZohm is used to control power electronics and electrical drives
The UltraZohm is work in progress
Funded by BMBF-Project KI-Power

../_images/front_lowres.png — Fig. 16 Front of the UltraZohm.#

Requirements of the UltraZohm#

Development goals#

Computational power: The use of more complex control algorithms based on model predictive control and/or artificial intelligence, as well as the increased use of wide-band gap power electronics, require a real-time computing unit with sufficient processing power. The necessary processing power is provided by the UltraZohm. A heterogenous SoC is used due to the diverse requirements of different applications and control algorithms. The UltraZohm project uses the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC on a SoM by Trenz Electronics.
Hard real-time: Fast calculations are not sufficient for the control of power electronics which require hard real-time, i.e. the system must meet the real-time at all times. Missing the real-time results in malfunction, undefined behavior or failure of the system. The UltraZohm is designed to meet these hard real-time requirements. Control algorithms for power electronics and electrical drives typically require a control time of \(5 \mu s\) to \(100 \mu s\).
Modularity: The UltraZohm is modular in terms of software and hardware. The system can be used with different devices within the UltraScale MPSoC family. Adapter cards are used as a flexible interface for analoge and digital signals such as ADC’s and gate signals for power electronics. Software modularity is achieved by using encapsulated design patterns combined with IP-Cores on the FPGA.
Usability: We aim to create a system with a high usability. The UltraZohm is novice friendly since there are a lot of different tutorials, existing IP-Cores and adapter cards that are used by the community. Therefore, a new user does not have to start from scratch. The UltraZohm is expert friendly since there are no black boxes in the system. Due to project being open source, every user can investigate every line of code, every IP-Core and the complete signal chain in the schematics. Furthermore, everybody is encouraged to contribute to the UltraZohm and improve the system!

Requirements#

The following requirements are derived from the development goals of the UltraZohm.

Table 1 table#
Category	Name	Requirement	Documentation
Real-time	MPC-Control	FCS-MPC with N=3 calculation time below 5us
Real-time	FOC control of PMSM	State of the art FOC
Real-time	MPC-Control in lab	FCS-MPC with N=3 is evaluated with a demonstrator
Adapter card	Slow ADC (up to 125 kSPS)	Up to 100 parallel measurements
Adapter card	Fast ADC (up to 5 MPSP)	Up to 24 parallel measurements	Analog LTC2311-16 3v01
Adapter card	Digital interface for control signals of inverter	3V3/5V/15V	Digital Voltage 3U 2v01
Adapter card	Optical interface card	18 channels	Digital Optical
Adapter card	Encoder Card	Common encoder interfaces (Resolver Incremental)	Digital Incremental Encoder
AI	Neural network on FPGA	Common neural networks in reinforcement learning can be computed on the FPGA with calculation time below 10us
AI	Control of PMSM by reinforcement learning controller	Usage of DQN to control PMSM
Usability	C-Code generation toolchain and documentation	Easy usage of Embedded-Coder for targeting R5
Usability	HDL-Code generation toolchain and documentation	Easy usage of HDL-Coder for targeting R5
Safety	Safe platform	Provide hardware to allow certification
Safety	Basic safety functions for safe operation of the system
Safety	Functions to protect the system from damage
Community	Training of young researchers and students
Community	Building a research community around the UltraZohm

Overview of the project#

The UltraZohm project is hosted on a bitbucket repository. The repository is structured in the following way, with some important files highlighted. The source of this documentation is located in ultrazohm_sw/docs/source/. The online version (docs.ultrazohm.com) is always the documentation of the current state of the main branch.

ultrazohm_sw/
├── docs/
|   ├── source/
|   ├── requirements.txt
|   └── Makefile
├── ip_core/
├── javascope/
├── tcl_scripts/
|   ├── vivado_export_xsa.tcl
│   ├── vitis_generate_UltraZohm_workspace.tcl
│   └── vitis_update_platform.tcl
├── vitis/
|   ├── software/
│   └── vivado_exported_xsa
|      └── zusys_wrapper.xsa
└── vivado/
    └── project/
        └── ultrazohm.xpr

Simple block diagram of UltraZohm#

Components of UltraZohm#

        graph TD
UltraZohm --> Cabinet
UltraZohm --> Carrier-Board
UltraZohm --> Adapter
UltraZohm --> SoM

Interfaces of Carrier-Board#

        graph TD
Carrier-Board --> Power("Power Supply")
Power --> p_in("Power Input")
Power --> p_out("Power Output")
Carrier-Board --> SoM("SoM")
Carrier-Board --> analog("Analog (A1..A3)")
Carrier-Board --> dig("Digital (D1..D5)")
Carrier-Board --> JTAG
JTAG --> CPLD
JTAG --> MPSoC
Carrier-Board --> SD-Card
Carrier-Board --> PS_GPIO("PS GPIO")
Carrier-Board --> Communication
Communication --> SPI
Communication --> Serial
Communication --> Ethernet
Communication --> CAN

Interfaces of Cabinet#

        graph TD
Cabinet --> Rack
Cabinet --> Power-Supply
Power-Supply --> Line-Voltage-Plug
Cabinet --> Front-Plane
Front-Plane --> Communication
Front-Plane --> Power-ON
Front-Plane --> Button
Front-Plane --> LED
LED --> LED1
LED --> LED2
LED --> LED3
LED --> LED4
Button --> SW1
Button --> SW2
Button --> SW3
Button --> External-Stop
Communication --> Ethernet
Communication --> CAN
Communication --> JTAG

Project

Platform

Code generation

Javascope

How to guides