Send USRP-users mailing list submissions to
[email protected]
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[email protected]
You can reach the person managing the list at
[email protected]
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of USRP-users digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement (Martin Braun)
2. Re: [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement (Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras)
3. Re: B210 UHD FPGA (Martin Braun)
4. Re: [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement (Martin Braun)
5. Re: [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement (Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras)
6. Re: [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement (Martin Braun)
7. Re: [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement (Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras)
8. Re: rx_samples_to_file issue (Robert Kossler)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:42:22 +0200
From: Martin Braun <[email protected]>
To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]>
Subject: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Hi there, USRP users,
we have just finalized the RC phase of UHD 3.7.3. The new release has
been tagged and pushed. As usual, you can find the tagged version on our
repository at https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd/tree/release_003_007_003.
Between the release candidate and the actual release, there were some
minor changes, mostly stability tweaks. This version of UHD is bugfix
release only, new features will be released in the upcoming 3.8 version
of UHD.
The image package was renamed, following our naming convention, but the
images themself are actually the same.
Binary installers for UHD 3.7.3 will follow later this week.
I would like to thank everyone who gave this RC a try, helping us making
this release as stable as we can.
Cheers,
Martin
3.7.3 changelog:
* Fixed examples
* Removed compiler warnings
* Fixed CBX LO settings (FRAC truncation)
* Fixed build issues for out-of-tree tools for some distros
* Fixed some logging strings (SBX, GPSDO)
* Improved logging (speedups, removed unnecessary cycles)
* Added output sync for DAC reference clocks on X300
* Multiple FPGA improvements, as well as upgrade of build env
* Added support for B200 vs B210 discovery
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 09:57:18 +0200
From: "Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras" <[email protected]>
To: "'Martin Braun'" <[email protected]>,
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hi,
Does it fix the B210 issues? At the moment the B210 is almost unusable for
me :) OpenBTS, OpenLTE, gqrx, they all crash after a while, and the .003-RC1
was no big help. Things may have become a bit better with it, but far from
being perfect.
Ralph.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Martin Braun via USRP-users
> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 9:42 AM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
>
> Hi there, USRP users,
>
> we have just finalized the RC phase of UHD 3.7.3. The new release has been
> tagged and pushed. As usual, you can find the tagged version on our
> repository at
> https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd/tree/release_003_007_003.
>
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:04:35 +0200
From: Martin Braun <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] B210 UHD FPGA
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Konstantin,
which UHD version are you using? Also, am I understanding you correctly
that you built your FPGA images yourself? If so, do ours work?
Cheers,
M
On 10/03/2014 03:22 PM, Konstantin via USRP-users wrote:
> Dear Sirs,
> I'm dealing with Ettus B210 board and I have the following problem.
> I built the B210 FPGA source code and it worked well a few month ago.
> Thereafter I update local copy of repository and I can see there are few
> changes in repository during some months.
> Now I can build FPGA source code for B210 board but when I try to start
> FPGA bin image I have the next error
>
>
>> sudo ./rx_ascii_art_dft --freq 24000000 --gain 30 --rate 4000000
>
> Creating the usrp device with: ...
> -- Loading firmware image:
> /usr/local/share/uhd/images/usrp_b200_fw.hex... done
> -- Loading FPGA image: /usr/local/share/uhd/images/usrp_b210_fpga.bin...
> done
> -- Operating over USB 2.
> Error: AssertionError: accum_timeout < _timeout
> in uint64_t radio_ctrl_core_3000_impl::wait_for_ack(bool)
> at /home/cubie/uhd/host/lib/usrp/cores/radio_ctrl_core_3000.cpp:232
>
> I try to start it on Linux and Windows but I have the same error.
>
> Could you check this error on B210 or B200 board ?
>
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 15:01:09 +0200
From: Martin Braun <[email protected]>
To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Hey Ralph et al,
there were no major changes in B200 code in this release. However, I was
under the impression that you and others were working with the master
branch, which has a known issue (for which we will have a fix very soon).
Ralph, apologies if I've asked you this before, but which USB3 chipset
are you using?
Cheers,
M
On 10/06/2014 09:57 AM, Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Does it fix the B210 issues? At the moment the B210 is almost unusable for
> me :) OpenBTS, OpenLTE, gqrx, they all crash after a while, and the .003-RC1
> was no big help. Things may have become a bit better with it, but far from
> being perfect.
>
> Ralph.
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
>> Martin Braun via USRP-users
>> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 9:42 AM
>> To: '[email protected]'
>> Subject: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
>>
>> Hi there, USRP users,
>>
>> we have just finalized the RC phase of UHD 3.7.3. The new release has been
>> tagged and pushed. As usual, you can find the tagged version on our
>> repository at
>> https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd/tree/release_003_007_003.
>>
>
>
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 15:36:53 +0200
From: "Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras" <[email protected]>
To: "'Martin Braun'" <[email protected]>,
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Ok, this sounds at least promising. Yes, at the moment I am using master,
maint also had the problem, maybe not that bad, but it is difficult to tell
the difference. Is there some older version available at the moment that
does not have this issue, just to check if I really experience the same
issue, and not a completely different issue troubles me? The Balint Seeber
ExtIO/HDSDR Windows package works perfectly, over hours of operation without
any crash, on the same machine, directly in the host OS.
Chipset is Intel 7 series / C216 family, but I don't know if the VM guest
sees the same, or only some generic / vmware thing. Lsusb command shows only
some vmware virtual USB hub stuff.
In case it could be useful to test something for you, just let me know. I'm
not a coder guy, but I can enter commands and collect logs and such.
Ralph.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Martin Braun via USRP-users
> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 3:01 PM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
>
> Hey Ralph et al,
>
> there were no major changes in B200 code in this release. However, I was
> under the impression that you and others were working with the master
> branch, which has a known issue (for which we will have a fix very soon).
>
> Ralph, apologies if I've asked you this before, but which USB3 chipset are
you
> using?
>
> Cheers,
> M
>
> On 10/06/2014 09:57 AM, Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Does it fix the B210 issues? At the moment the B210 is almost unusable
> > for me :) OpenBTS, OpenLTE, gqrx, they all crash after a while, and
> > the .003-RC1 was no big help. Things may have become a bit better with
> > it, but far from being perfect.
> >
> > Ralph.
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On
> >> Behalf Of Martin Braun via USRP-users
> >> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 9:42 AM
> >> To: '[email protected]'
> >> Subject: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
> >>
> >> Hi there, USRP users,
> >>
> >> we have just finalized the RC phase of UHD 3.7.3. The new release has
> >> been tagged and pushed. As usual, you can find the tagged version on
> >> our repository at
> >> https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd/tree/release_003_007_003.
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> USRP-users mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 15:54:40 +0200
From: Martin Braun <[email protected]>
To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Ralph,
first of all thanks for being so cooperative on this issue.
To recap: As far as we know, the current images on master branch have a
bug with some boards, which is due to the SDK version we compiled with.
On these boards, streaming will fail pretty soon at high rates (a few
minutes if streaming at max rate).
This is a known issue, and as mentioned, we'll have a fix very soon.
On maint branch on the other hand, we are not certain there's a bug, as
reports have been inconclusive, and we were not able to reproduce this
in our lab. We know for a fact that there are *many* buggy USB3 chipsets
out there (your's is, as far as we know, not one of them).
Maybe VM's exacerbate this issue as well.
So, any version of the 3.7 release series should work.
When you say your maint branch has a problem, but not quite so bad, I'd
like to know what exactly this means, so we can get down to this problem.
Thanks,
Martin
On 10/06/2014 03:36 PM, Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras wrote:
> Ok, this sounds at least promising. Yes, at the moment I am using master,
> maint also had the problem, maybe not that bad, but it is difficult to tell
> the difference. Is there some older version available at the moment that
> does not have this issue, just to check if I really experience the same
> issue, and not a completely different issue troubles me? The Balint Seeber
> ExtIO/HDSDR Windows package works perfectly, over hours of operation without
> any crash, on the same machine, directly in the host OS.
>
> Chipset is Intel 7 series / C216 family, but I don't know if the VM guest
> sees the same, or only some generic / vmware thing. Lsusb command shows only
> some vmware virtual USB hub stuff.
>
> In case it could be useful to test something for you, just let me know. I'm
> not a coder guy, but I can enter commands and collect logs and such.
>
> Ralph.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
>> Martin Braun via USRP-users
>> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 3:01 PM
>> To: '[email protected]'
>> Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
>>
>> Hey Ralph et al,
>>
>> there were no major changes in B200 code in this release. However, I was
>> under the impression that you and others were working with the master
>> branch, which has a known issue (for which we will have a fix very soon).
>>
>> Ralph, apologies if I've asked you this before, but which USB3 chipset are
> you
>> using?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> M
>>
>> On 10/06/2014 09:57 AM, Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Does it fix the B210 issues? At the moment the B210 is almost unusable
>>> for me :) OpenBTS, OpenLTE, gqrx, they all crash after a while, and
>>> the .003-RC1 was no big help. Things may have become a bit better with
>>> it, but far from being perfect.
>>>
>>> Ralph.
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On
>>>> Behalf Of Martin Braun via USRP-users
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 9:42 AM
>>>> To: '[email protected]'
>>>> Subject: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
>>>>
>>>> Hi there, USRP users,
>>>>
>>>> we have just finalized the RC phase of UHD 3.7.3. The new release has
>>>> been tagged and pushed. As usual, you can find the tagged version on
>>>> our repository at
>>>> https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd/tree/release_003_007_003.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> USRP-users mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
>
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 16:41:43 +0200
From: "Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras" <[email protected]>
To: "'Martin Braun'" <[email protected]>,
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
This "not so bad" is difficult to tell, maybe it was just some coincidence.
Maybe I find time to test it more thoroughly.
So it is an issue of the FPGA image?
Ralph.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Martin Braun via USRP-users
> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 3:55 PM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
>
> Ralph,
>
> first of all thanks for being so cooperative on this issue.
>
> To recap: As far as we know, the current images on master branch have a
> bug with some boards, which is due to the SDK version we compiled with.
> On these boards, streaming will fail pretty soon at high rates (a few
> minutes if streaming at max rate).
> This is a known issue, and as mentioned, we'll have a fix very soon.
>
> On maint branch on the other hand, we are not certain there's a bug, as
> reports have been inconclusive, and we were not able to reproduce this
> in our lab. We know for a fact that there are *many* buggy USB3 chipsets
> out there (your's is, as far as we know, not one of them).
> Maybe VM's exacerbate this issue as well.
> So, any version of the 3.7 release series should work.
>
> When you say your maint branch has a problem, but not quite so bad, I'd
> like to know what exactly this means, so we can get down to this problem.
>
> Thanks,
> Martin
>
>
> On 10/06/2014 03:36 PM, Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras wrote:
> > Ok, this sounds at least promising. Yes, at the moment I am using
master,
> > maint also had the problem, maybe not that bad, but it is difficult to
tell
> > the difference. Is there some older version available at the moment that
> > does not have this issue, just to check if I really experience the same
> > issue, and not a completely different issue troubles me? The Balint
Seeber
> > ExtIO/HDSDR Windows package works perfectly, over hours of operation
> without
> > any crash, on the same machine, directly in the host OS.
> >
> > Chipset is Intel 7 series / C216 family, but I don't know if the VM
guest
> > sees the same, or only some generic / vmware thing. Lsusb command
> shows only
> > some vmware virtual USB hub stuff.
> >
> > In case it could be useful to test something for you, just let me know.
I'm
> > not a coder guy, but I can enter commands and collect logs and such.
> >
> > Ralph.
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf Of
> >> Martin Braun via USRP-users
> >> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 3:01 PM
> >> To: '[email protected]'
> >> Subject: Re: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
> >>
> >> Hey Ralph et al,
> >>
> >> there were no major changes in B200 code in this release. However, I
was
> >> under the impression that you and others were working with the master
> >> branch, which has a known issue (for which we will have a fix very
soon).
> >>
> >> Ralph, apologies if I've asked you this before, but which USB3 chipset
are
> > you
> >> using?
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> M
> >>
> >> On 10/06/2014 09:57 AM, Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Does it fix the B210 issues? At the moment the B210 is almost unusable
> >>> for me :) OpenBTS, OpenLTE, gqrx, they all crash after a while, and
> >>> the .003-RC1 was no big help. Things may have become a bit better with
> >>> it, but far from being perfect.
> >>>
> >>> Ralph.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: USRP-users [mailto:[email protected]] On
> >>>> Behalf Of Martin Braun via USRP-users
> >>>> Sent: Monday, October 6, 2014 9:42 AM
> >>>> To: '[email protected]'
> >>>> Subject: [USRP-users] [UHD 3.7.3] Release Announcement
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi there, USRP users,
> >>>>
> >>>> we have just finalized the RC phase of UHD 3.7.3. The new release has
> >>>> been tagged and pushed. As usual, you can find the tagged version on
> >>>> our repository at
> >>>> https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd/tree/release_003_007_003.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> USRP-users mailing list
> >> [email protected]
> >> http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> USRP-users mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 11:11:03 -0400
From: Robert Kossler <[email protected]>
To: Marcus M?ller <[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [USRP-users] rx_samples_to_file issue
Message-ID:
<CAB__hTTqv_BW5a_guFhr5NJ8sdvyDc_0eYCP=mtij7e8boe...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hi Marcus,
The example you provided in your most recent post regarding setting up a
RAM FIFO seems to me to be an excellent idea (although I haven't tried it
yet). I would just like to comment that these kinds of examples would be
extremely helpful if they were added to the UHD documentation in some way.
Personally, I am a relative novice using Linux so finding my own way to
these kinds of solutions can be time consuming. In order to solve my own
issues with overflows using rx_samples_to_file, I setup a RAM file system
and simply constrained the memory depth of my captures to the size of the
RAM file system. This solution can also be useful, and it would have been
helpful to have some tips of this nature in the UHD documentation.
I would also like to comment that it would be helpful if the
rx_samples_to_file utility worked for multiple channels. I understand the
"it's only an example" mindset, but on the other hand, there is no "actual"
application level software provided with the Ettus boards so the examples
take on a greater level of importance. It would only minorly add to the
complexity of this example to have it work for multiple channels. And,
given the number of users that seem to be interested in capturing Rx data,
it would be a welcome change - especially for non-programmers.
Rob Kossler
On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 9:14 AM, Marcus M?ller <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> didn't mean to confuse you! Actually, my job is doing the opposite (ie.
> providing useful information), and thus let me just shortly follow up on
> this:
> On 03.10.2014 17:44, Peter Witkowski via USRP-users wrote:
>
> So I'm confused.
>
> You state that if I can't use rx_samples_to_file, my system is failing to
> perform as specified to write data out, then you give an example of several
> things that can happen to create a stochastic write speed (which I totally
> understand and agree with). Given that writes can be stochastic, why is
> there not a software buffer implemented in the UHD sample code to account
> for such issues?
>
> Well, because that's, in my opinion, an operating system's job. Being a
> code example, rx_samples_to_file just *musn't* contain the complexity
> introduced when you try to implement buffering functionality smarter than
> what your OS can do. And, I do think it's nearly impossible to be smarter
> than the linux kernel when optimizing writes -- *but* you'll have to tell
> your kernel what you want, as a user. The kernel, as it is configured by
> any modern distribution by default, won't do enormous write buffers,
> because that's not what the user usually wants, increasing the risk of data
> loss in case of system failure, and because you usually don't want to spend
> all of your RAM on filesystem buffers. In your 64GB RAM case, though,
> default buffer sizes should suffice, I guess, so I'm a bit out of clues
> here.
> It is definitely not very hard to increase these buffers' sizes[1], so I
> encourage you to try it and see if that solves your problem. Now, I must
> admit that up to here I was always assuming you hadn't already played
> around with these values, if this is not the case, please accept my
> apologies!
>
> I understand that it's meant to be an example, but I've
> also seen it referenced as being used effectively as a debugger or test for
> people having issues (i.e. recommendation to use the UHD programs in place
> of GNURadio to resolve issues).
>
> ...and it's done many users and thus Ettus a great job of supplying basic
> functionality! The fact that it works in almost any situation with this
> very minimalistic approach (repeated recv->write) proves that UHD is in
> fact a rather nice driver interface, IMHO. The fact that GNU Radio
> sometimes solves issues that rx_samples_to_file can't indicates exactly the
> buffering approach to be helpful. But in that case, buffering is not
> increased by increasing kernel buffer sizes, but by introducing GNU Radio
> buffers between blocks. The USRP source (Martin, scold me if I say
> something stupid) is not really much smarter than rx_samples_to_file: It
> recv()s a packet of samples, and returns these samples from the work
> function, and then GNU Radio takes care of shuffling and buffering that
> data. Basically, GNU Radio behaves much like an operating system from the
> source block's point of view.
>
>
> Also, in terms of benchmarking, I'm quoting minimum values, not averages.
> I agree with you that average values are pointless, and in reality the disk
> subsystem needs to perform when called up. My minimum values for a 4 disk
> RAID0 with a dedicated controller are well within the data rate that I am
> pushing.
>
> Well, I'll kind of disagree with you: If your minimum write rate of your
> system was bigger than the rate rx_samples_to_file causes, then you
> wouldn't see the problem. The point, I believe, here is that the storage
> system does not only consist of the hardware side of your RAID, but also on
> your complete operating environment. Something slows down how fast data is
> written to the RAID.
> I think we both would expect the following to happen:
>
> repeatedly:
>
> rx_samples_to_file:
> uhd::rx_streamer::recv
> (blocks until a packet of samples has arrived. Instantly returns if it
> has before the call)
> write(file_handle, recv_buff)
> (instantly returns, because writing should hit a buffer that the
> operating system transparently pushes out to a disk. If buffer is full,
> then block until enough space in buffer -- unless your filesystem is
> mounted with some sync option...)
>
> Now, if your RAID is definitely fast enough, the write buffer should never
> get full. My hypothesis here is that either, your buffer size is just to
> small, and a block of samples doesn't fit and has to be written out
> instantly (which is unlikely), or something else occupies your system. That
> might be just the fact that 400MB/s (are we talking about an X3x0?)
> inevitably places a heavy load on things like PCIe busses and CPUs, and
> that introduces a bottleneck in your storage chain which isn't there if you
> "just" benchmark without the USRP. Also, the rather smallish sizes of
> network packets dictate that journalling file systems introduce a very bad
> overhead -- I don't know if you benchmarked with files on a journaling file
> system and a (network packet size - header) block size...
>
>
> Is there an example system that can handle sustained data capture from the
> USRP at (or near the limits) of 10GigE or the PCIe interfaces (maybe the
> requirement is enterprise class PCIe SSDs)? I'm running a two socket Xenon
> system (two hex core processors) with 64GB of RAM. How much more hardware
> should I throw at the problem to be able to sample/write at 100MS (half of
> what is quoted on the website for bandwidth for the 10GigE kit) using the
> provided code?
>
> Definitely a nice system! I must admit that I don't have access to a
> comparable setup, and thus I can't really offer you any first-hand
> experience. Maybe others can.
>
> I think the issue here is that the code itself can't simply get through
> it's main loop fast enough. There's a difference between data bandwidth
> and CPU throughput. The sequential nature of the code means that if any
> weird stuff happens (your example was a good set of kernel related hilarity
> that can lead to stochastic timing) you will have overflows since you
> cannot read fast enough. This is why a 90% solution for my application was
> to just set the dirty_background_ratio to 0 and also why redirection to
> /dev/null makes overflows go away.
>
> This is interesting, as dirty_background_ratio is the percentage at which
> the kernel should start writing out dirty pages in the background. Now, I'm
> the one who's confused, because I would have expected this to negatively
> impact performance. On the other hand, 0 (at least in my head) does not
> make very much sense, maybe it's semantically identical to 100%? Are you
> swapping (64GB would tell me you shouldn't have swap or extremly low
> swappiness)?
> On the other hand, it might really be that storage is not the bottleneck
> here, and in fact maybe the CPU gets saturated. Now, you said that writing
> to /dev/null solves your problem. Do your RAID or filesystem consume a lot
> of CPU cycles? This is an interesting mystery...
>
> With either method I didn't have to
> wait for a large write cache to flush before moving on to the next read
> from the USRP. Note that there can also be things that happen on the read
> side as well. Does this mean that I can only run the code on an RTOS?
>
> No :) UHD has it's own incoming buffer handlers, but as you already said,
> in this high performance scenario, you might be totally right, and our
> single-threaded approach just doesn't cut it. Maybe dropping in some
> asynchronous storage IO would help -- but I hate seeing that blowing up in
> example users' faces, so I guess the fact that it doesn't work with a
> system as potent as yours with the sample rates as high as you demand might
> actually be a shortcoming of the examples that isn't going to be fixed.
>
> As a final note, my understanding is that GNURadio and the USRP were
> developed for domain experts in DSP to use.
>
> These are SDR frameworks and devices, respectively. The idea is to offer
> people with the opportunity to build awesome DSP systems using universally
> usable SDR blocks (GNU Radio) and universal software radio peripherals, so
> well, they certainly address DSP people, but they shouldn't be hard to use.
>
> These users may or may not
> have prior experience in software. As a result, I'd recommend perhaps
> adding a buffered example or have the USRP GNURadio block allow for
> buffering.
>
> That is something we might consider. On the other hand, when someone goes
> as far as you do, maybe having an example that does the buffering in a
> separate thread (or even process) isn't worth that much -- in the end, one
> will want to write one's own high performance application, and that will
> include handling such data rates.
>
> Otherwise, I just don't see how you can advertise 200 MS/s
> (maybe even a simple "buffer" block in GNURadio would do the trick?).
>
> Well, the devices support these rates, and our driver is able to
> withstand these rates and sustain them without hitting CPU barriers due to
> having too much overhead. That's awesome (ok, I might be biased, but *I*
> think it's awesome). I don't feel ashamed because on your specific setup,
> we can't find a way to make any of our generic examples deliver the full
> rate of rx streams to storage -- we sell RF hardware, and not storage
> infrastructure, and the point of the examples is demonstrating the usage of
> UHD, and not holding a lecture on high performance storage handling. I
> wish, though, that we could solve your problem.
>
> Now, GNU Radio/gr-uhd does in fact come with an application called
> uhd_rx_cfile, which is more or less a clone of rx_samples_to_file using
> gr-uhd and GNU Radio instead of raw UHD. Does that work out for you?
>
> I
> understand that this is theoretical limit of the bus, but if there doesn't
> exist a driver or other software to make use of this, the practical limit
> becomes much, much smaller.
>
> Well, UHD seems to be able to sustain these rates, if you write to
> /dev/null, right? So the practical limit for UHD is definitely not being
> hit.
> I have another --maybe even practical-- suggestion to make: Roll your own
> buffer!
>
> mkfifo /tmp/mybuffer #assuming tmpfs is in ram
> dd if=/tmp/mybuffer of=/mount/raid_volume/data.dat & #start in background;
> you could play around with block sizes using the bs= option of dd
> rx_samples_to_file --file /tmp/mybuffer [all the other options]
>
> By the way: Thanks for bringing this up! We know that recording samples is
> a core concern of many users.
>
> Greetings,
> Marcus
>
> [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Marcus M?ller <[email protected]>
> <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
> I have to agree with Marcus on this. Also, keep in mind that storage is
> really what an operating system should take care of in any "general
> purpose" scenario, ie. that as long as I just write to a file, I'd expect
> that the thing in charge of storage (my kernel / the filesystems / block
> device drivers) does the best it can to keep up. If I find myself in a
> situation where my specific storage needs dictate a huge write buffer,
> changing the application might be one way, but as I'm responsible for my
> won storage subsystem, I could just as well increase the cache buffer
> sizes, and let the operating system handle storage operation. If your RAID
> is really performing as well as it is benchmarked to, then this should not
> be one of your problems. All rx_samples_to_file does is really sequentially
> writing out data at a constant rate, which is the most basic write
> benchmark I can think of.
>
> If your storage subsystem (filesystem + storage abstraction + raid driver
> + interface driver + hard drive interface + hard drives + hardware caches)
> can't keep up, it's failing to perform as specified, simple as that. In
> this case, saying that the application needs to be smarter when dealing
> with storage seems like a bit of a cop-out to me ;)
>
> I'd like to point out that most benchmarks use heavily averaged numbers
> for write speeds etc. UHD on the other hand kind of demands soft real-time
> performance of a write subsystem, which is a lot harder to fulfill. This
> comes up rather frequently, but I have to stress it: you need a fast
> guaranteed write rate, not only an average one, and as soon as your
> operating system has to postpone writing data[1], it has to have enough
> performance to catch up whilst still meeting continued demand. This is
> general purpose hardware running general purpose OS with dozens of
> processes, and you can't just say "every single component is up to my task,
> thus my system suffices", because everything potentially blocks everything!
>
> Greetings,
> Marcus
>
> [1] e.g. because the filesystems needs to calculate checksums, update
> tables, another process gets scheduled, a device blocks your PCIe bus, your
> platters randomly need a bit longer to seek, you reach the physical end of
> an LVM volume and have to move across a disk, an interrupt does what an
> interrupt does, some process is getting noticed on a changing file
> descriptor, DBUS is happening in the kernel, token ring has run out of
> tokens, thermal throttling, bitflips on SATA leading to retransmission,
> some page getting fetched from swap...
>
>
> On 03.10.2014 15:34, Marcus D. Leech via USRP-users wrote:
>
>
>
> One has to keep firmly in mind that programs like rx_samples_to_file are
> *examples* that show how to use
>
> the underlying UHD API. They are not necessarily optimized for all
> situations, and indeed, one could
>
> restructure rx_samples_to_file to decouple UHD I/O from filesystem I/O,
> using a large buffer between them.
>
> The fact is that dynamic performance of high-speed, real-time, flows is
> something that almost-invariably needs
>
> tweaking for any particular situation. There's no way for an example
> application to meet all those requirements.
>
> But the fact also remains that for *some* systems, rx_samples_to_file
> (and uhd_rx_cfile on the Gnu Radio side)
>
> are able to stream high-speed data just fine as-is.
>
> On 2014-10-03 09:26, Peter Witkowski via USRP-users wrote:
>
>
> To say that the issue is just because the disk subsystem can't keep up is a
> bit of cop-out.
>
> I had issues writing to disk when the incoming stream was 400MB/s and my
> RAID0 system was benchmarked at being much higher than that.
>
> The issue that I've been seeing stems from the fact that it appears that you
> cannot concurrently read/write from the data stream as its coming in. In
> effect you have a main loop that reads from the device and then immediately
> tries to write that buffer to file. If you do not complete these operations
> in a timely fashion overflows occur.
>
> One way to solve (or at least band aid the issue) is to set your
> dirty_background_ratio to 0. I was able to get writing to disk working
> somewhat with this setting as it is more predictable to directly write to
> disk instead of having your write cache fill up and then having a large
> amount of data to push to disk. That said, my RAID0 array is capable of such
> speeds and even then I was getting a few (but much reduced) overflows.
>
> The one surefire way I know of getting this working (even on a slow disk
> system) is to buffer the data. The buffer can then be consumed by the disk
> writing process while being concurrently added onto by the device reader. The
> easiest way to test buffering (that I've found) is to simply set up a
> GNURadio Companion program with a stream-to-vector block between the USRP and
> file sink blocks. This is exactly what I am doing currently since even with a
> very powerful system, I could not get data saved to disk quickly enough given
> the aforementioned issues with the provided UHD software.
>
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 11:48 PM, gsmandvoip via USRP-users
> <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Thanks Marcus for your replies. Yes O gone away.
>
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Marcus D. Leech <[email protected]>
> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> with rx_samples_to_file without _4rx.rbf, Initially I tried on my i3, 4GB
> ram, it gave me
> some OOOO but was lesser than earlier, but I do not understand, my most of
> the ram capacity and processor was sitting idle while it shows OOOO, why is
> this strange behaviour The default format for uhd_rx_cfile is complex-float,
> thus doubling the amount of data written compared to rx_samples_to_file.
>
> You can't just use CPU usage as an indicator of loading--if you're writing to
> disk, the disk subsystem may be much slower than you think, so the
> "rate limiting step" is writes to the disk, not computational elements.
>
> Try using /dev/null as the file that you write to. If the 'O' go away, even
> at higher sampling rates, then it's your disk subsystem.
>
> using uhd_rx_cfile getting similar result, but strangely, why it is low, at
> 4M sampling rate it was higher???
>
> On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 9:27 AM, Marcus D. Leech <[email protected]>
> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 10/01/2014 11:46 PM, gsmandvoip wrote:
>
> Yes I am running single channel, but when trying to achieve my desired
> sampling rate without _4rx.rbf, it says, requested sampling rate is not
> valid, adjusting to some 3.9M or so. sorry for misleading info I gave
> earlier, I have i3, with 32 bit and i7 with 64 bit, but getting same result
> on both machines
>
> Here is my command to capture signal:
>
> ./rx_samples_to_file --args="fpga=usrp1_fpga_4rx.rbf, subdev=DBSRX" --freq
> "$FC" --rate="$SR" $FILE --nsamps "$NSAMPLES"
>
> and here is its output:
>
> Creating the usrp device with: fpga=usrp1_fpga_4rx.rbf, subdev=DBSRX...
> -- Loading firmware image: /usr/share/uhd/images/usrp1_fw.ihx... done
> -- Opening a USRP1 device...
> -- Loading FPGA image: /usr/share/uhd/images/usrp1_
> fpga_4rx.rbf... done
> -- Using FPGA clock rate of 52.000000MHz...
> ERROR: LOOKUPERROR: INDEXERROR: MULTI_USRP::GET_TX_SUBDEV_SPEC(0) FAILED TO
> MAKE DEFAULT SPEC - VALUEERROR: THE SUBDEVICE SPECIFICATION "A:0" IS TOO LONG.
> The user specified 1 channels, but there are only 0 tx dsps on mboard 0.
>
> Don't use the _4rx image if you don't need it.
>
> The USRP1 only does strict-integer resampling, and with a master clock (NON
> STANDARD FOR USRP1) of 52.000MHz, 4Msps is not a sample rate
> that it can produce. Try 5.2Msps or 4.3333Msps.
>
> At 5.2Msps, it's recording at roughly 20.8Mbytes/second, so your system needs
> to be able to sustain that for at least as long as the capture lasts.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> USRP-users mailing
> [email protected]http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> USRP-users mailing
> [email protected]http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> USRP-users mailing
> [email protected]http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> USRP-users mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.ettus.com/pipermail/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com/attachments/20141006/a91823a1/attachment-0001.html>
------------------------------
Subject: Digest Footer
_______________________________________________
USRP-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ettus.com/mailman/listinfo/usrp-users_lists.ettus.com
------------------------------
End of USRP-users Digest, Vol 50, Issue 6
*****************************************
