At 2004-07-15 16:48, docydoc wrote:

>Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>
>> At 2004-07-14 19:33, ali marjovi wrote:
>> >I'm building a data aquisition system with one 8 bit
>> >input sampled at 400khz and need to save stream of
>> >about 1 minute duration in PC RAM.
>> >I'm using ADC0820 as A2D and also data transfer
>> >through ISA bus .
>> >My question is about PC part.Is it nessecary to use
>> >DMA transfer?
>>
>> It depends on if you want to do anything else during
>> the transport. The strange thing with a PC is that the
>> CPU is about as fast as DMA when you use string
>> instructions. I'm now talking about early PC's, so
>> upto the 286.
>>
>> With modern CPU's it might even be possible to do it
>> with the CPU using interrupts. If you have a 1 Ghz
>> CPU (like I have) you can execute about 2 G instructions
>> per second so you can execute 2000000/400=5000
>> instructions between two samples, which should be
>> enough even when the cache isn't cooperating
>> optimally.
>
>You'll used DMA when you have a controller pushing your A/D-data
>directly into the main memory of the host system.
>Otherwise you'll have a driver or something similar that work with
>the CPU which is not DMA.

A driver is software and can work with either interrupts
or DMA. Your sentence doesn't seem to make sense.

>I can't see any advantage to put just 400k *8 bits /s = 390kB/s with DMA.

Please consider that the DMA-devices in the PC are still
(for compatibility-reasons) 8-bit wide for the first IC and
16-bit wide for the second IC. (Both 4 channels.)

>A CPU is usually fast enough to move the data quick enough to
>the computer's main memory if you directly stream it down.

Can you redefine 'directly stream it down' in technical terms?

>I would not worry about it too much. Don't mess around with DMA
>programming at these data rates except you want to buffer in your
>application,

Of course he wants to buffer it in his application, because it's
not a steady stream he is handling.

>do some calculation with a DSP for example and then
>send it as fast as possible to the host (preferably in burst mode-DMA
>then).

Huh and now you start advocating a stand-alone board with a DSP?

And to top it of, suddenly you think that DMA does make sense?

You even confuse me!

-- 
Author: Jaap van Ganswijk
  INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Fat City Hosting, San Diego, California -- http://www.fatcity.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB CHIPDIR-L
(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may
also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).

Reply via email to