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Talk21 min

Python-based, flexible testbench for a spacecraft payload

Roberto Rigamonti · CERN

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About

Testing an FPGA design is complex and time consuming. Testing the main payload of an ESA mission spacecraft much more so. While modern HDL languages have powerful test capabilities, they can hardly match the unbounded facilities provided by Python. We have thus devised a flexible, cocotb-based framework for the task, in which JSON files are used both to allow a high degree of configurability, and to have easily-composable test sequences. The whole testbench revolves around a set of invariants cast in a publisher-subscriber architecture, and is so flexible that performing hardware-in-the-loop tests just required a low-cost hardware interface and some glue logic. We will share our experience with the different tools adopted and the issues we have encountered in our journey..

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The talk

  1. Python-based, flexible testbench for a spacecraft payload 2025-05-23 · 21 min · CERN's player

Credits and licence

Institution
CERN
Department
FPGA Developers' Forum (FDF)
Speaker
Roberto Rigamonti
Year
2025
Language
English
Source
CERN
Licence
CERN, as CERN states it. CERN's terms
Attribution
© CERN. CERN provides its audiovisual media free of charge for educational and informational use, credited to CERN; this lecture is shown in CERN's own player.
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