[snip]
Are you sure it is Ethernet based?
To get 1600 x 1200 (probably not 1280) you need:
1600 x 1200 x 24 bits x 70 fps = 3,225,600,000 bits per second.
Yes, it could be compressed, and it could be less than 70 fps, but
even so, you are talking about a lot of digital BW. Even gigabit might
not be up to it for 1600 x 1200.
--Mac
UDP is the OP's input, he doesn't have to worry about data rates, he just
has to display what's coming in. It's like a graphics card with an Ethernet
bus instead of a PCI (Express) or whatever.
The OP said UPD, not UDP. He may have meant UDP (as John Larkin
suggested), and he may have meant UTP. Who knows?
In any event, the PCI bus can handle 33 MHz x 32 bit = 1,056,000,000 bits
per second. Of course, there is overhead, so that is a bit optimistic.
Fast Ethernet is 100 megabits per second. Not even close. So it has to be
gigabit Ethernet. But by today's standards, even gigabit isn't nearly fast
enough for a video bus. In fact, it hasn't been for some time. Just try to
find a high-end 32 bit 33MHz PCI video card.
Put a processor + Ethernet driver in the FPGA to handle the UDP/IP stack,
add an Ethernet chip and some memory for firmware and image buffer and use
what's left of the FPGA to get the data on the display. Make it GCC
compatible and most of the programming is done. See
www.opencores.org for
more info. Any cheaper won't be easy since most of it is already for free.
I don't think you know what you are talking about. There would be no
reason for a processor. Just an FPGA. And what do you mean by GCC
compatible?
And why bother with all of this anyway? Just use X or remote desktop or
whatever. Remote display over IP is a solved problem if the remote
location is also a PC.
And if all you have is a keyboard, monitor, and mouse, there are long
distance KVM deals which (AFAIK) send analog video over UTP.
On the other hand, I have often thought about designing a board which
takes 480P in, digitizes it, and spits out UDP packets over gigabit
ethernet.
This would allow you to send a movie from a DVD player over the LAN to any
computer. I'm not aware of any design that does this. I guess to really be
useful, you would have to put the audio stream in there, too.
Keeping up with the UDP packet rate might be a pretty big job for the
receiving computer.
--Mac