Nanosecond accuracy using SoC platforms

In this work, the implementation of IEEE 1588 functionalities on new Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC device is explored. An experimental set-up based on two Zynq commercial low-cost boards, with different PTP master and slave implementations has been analysed, taking benefit from the flexibility of the SoC all programmable devices. The explored features go from the only-software versions aided by the IEEE 1588-aware GMACs embedded in the processor sections to the high-accuracy solutions that combine the IEEE1588 hardware stuff of these modules with custom PTP IP cores in the FPGA sections of the devices. The results obtained from this analysis show excellent accuracy results, in the range of few nanoseconds and also standard deviation of less than 10 nanoseconds.