Empack Software Release Notes V3.5.8

Empack Software Release Notes
Version 3.5.8

February 4, 2008

Overview

Release 3.5.8 of the Empack software includes Version 3.5.8 of the host libraries and programs and Version 3.5.7 of the Embedded Firmware and FPGA configurations.
The following changes are introduced in this release:

Support for Adaptec PCIe SCSI Adapter.

Support for Solaris 10 and 64-bit x86 platforms.

Component versions for this release.

Support for Adaptec PCIe SCSI Adapter

The Empack API is modified to support Adaptec 29320LPE SCSI adapters for PCIe (PCI Express). The modification limits the the size of individual SCSI transfers to 32 Kbytes instead of 64 Kbytes. Data transfer requests larger than this limit are broken into sections, as they had been before.

This modification is required on Windows systems because the 29320LPE will not accept transfers of 64 Kbytes and the operating system is not providing a proper limit. Solaris systems appear to provide an appropriate limit for the 29320LPE. However, it was decided to impose a smaller limit in the Empack API rather than have to adjust specific system settings for various operating systems. The smaller limit does not cause any significant impact on system performance.

Support for Solaris 10 and 64 x86 Platforms

Some modifications to the software and Makefiles are made to support new versions of Solaris and the "amd64" architecture. Note that "amd64" architecture name refers to any 64-bit x86-type system, whether it has AMD processors or 64-bit Intel processors (sometimes referred to as x86_64 or EMT64).

In order to compile and install the Empack device driver for "amd64" systems, some additional macros for compiler flags and directory locations were added to the file: soldev/Makefile. This file must be edited to specify the compiler you want to use (Sun Studio cc or GNU gcc) as well as the compiler flags and location to install the device driver module based on the system type. Instructions on what settings to use are documented in the the file. The top-level Makefile for installing the software will no longer compile the device driver by default.

The device driver source code is modified to fill in values for two macros, DDI_IDENTIFIED and DDI_NOT_IDENTIFIED, that are no longer included in the header files for Solaris 10.

The emdiag.h header file now defines USE_STDARG for Solaris (as well as Windows) to use the newer definitions of the varargs library functions. This macro used to be set automatically, when required, in older versions of Solaris. The emdiag.h header file (in /usr/cac/include) may require editing for Solaris systems prior to Solaris 8 that do not have the stdarg.h header file.

Component Versions for This Release

The Empack API software release includes several components of software and hardware FPGA configurations. All the components have the same major and minor version numbers. However the update version number of each component may vary depending on the number of changes and iterations each component has gone through between general distribution releases.

The components and their versions for Empack Software Release 3.5.8 are:

Component:	Version:
API Library and Support Programs	3.5.8
Solaris Device Driver	3.5.5 (v1.17)
Windows Device Driver	3.5.0
Embedded Code / Baseboard FPGA Configurations	3.5.7
Front-End Embedded Code	3.5.4
Boot (Embedded) Code	B.013
Mezzanine FPGA Configurations	3.5.7