We are releasing ARTIQ-9 today, with a lot of new features, support for new hardware, and performance enhancements. Highlights:
One channel of 12Gbps CoaXpress is now supported on Kasli-SoC through the SFP port. This allows the connections of scientific cameras supporting this relatively new standard. The user-facing API is similar to that of the CameraLink Grabber. Note that some cameras require more than one channel and completely refuse to operate if this is not provided.
New gateware for Sinara Phaser now turns it into a fully-fledged DRTIO node, including support for flashing over DRTIO. The new gateware can also generate up to 26 tones simultaneously. Legacy Phaser gateware from QUARTIQ remains supported by this release.
This release supports the new Sinara Songbird featuring the 2.5Gsps LTC2000 DAC, and implements a 4-tone 16-bit DDS.
Urukul 1.6 is supported with new capabilities: Digital Ramp Generation (DRG) and individual per-channel control for PROFILE, IO_UPDATE, OSK, DRCTRL, DRHOLD, and ATT_EN. Phase-coherent SU-Servo has been integrated into this release.
FPGA devices (notably Kasli, Kasli-SoC, Phaser, and EFC-based devices such as Songbird and Shuttler) can now be flashed over the network and over DRTIO.
Improved SDRAM memory controller and DMA cores puts Kasli DMA performance on par with other platforms. On Zynq-7000 (typically Kasli-SoC), RPC throughput show 46% speedup when sending bytes and integer arrays, and slight improvements in other cases. Still on Zynq platforms, RTIO events can be now batched before execution for higher throughput, with lower overhead compared to DMA recording. And the overhead for switching between normal operation and DMA recording contexts is now lower by an order of magnitude.
The GUI now uses Qt 6 and ARTIQ-9 supports Python 3.13.
Optional SSL support with mutual certificate authentication was added between components running on computers.
There are also a number of smaller additions as well as some breaking changes, see the release notes in the repository for more details:
https://git.m-labs.hk/M-Labs/artiq/src/branch/release-9/RELEASE_NOTES.rst
To upgrade from ARTIQ-7 or ARTIQ-8, perform a new software installation according to the manual:
https://m-labs.hk/artiq/manual/installing.html
You will also need to update the firmware in the core devices. Firmware binaries for your system can be obtained from M-Labs through AFWS.
Unless otherwise noted, old devices including those based on Kasli 1.x remain supported by ARTIQ-9.
The next release ARTIQ-10 will introduce, among other features, the NAC3 compiler and support for multi-channel CoaXpress so that cameras such as the latest ORCA-Quest can be used.