Hello,
Just to give you a little background, I am a software engineer with alot of
experience in VxWorks. I am currently investigating moving a large, high
speed, data aquisition system from a multi single board computer, VME based
system over to a PC with a PCI-Express expansion bus and create a portable
slimmed down version. While the time constraints I have are in the 10s of
microseconds, I do have a need for consistency. I have some experience with
eCos but would like the bennefits that linux will offer.
I have a need for the same software work in various configurations in both a
server configuration and a portable configuration. The systems that I have are
as follows :
Dell Precision M65 Laptop with 2.16ghz dual core processor
4gb memory
Nvidia Quadro FX350 Graphics
SATA disk
Configuration 1 :
Docking station containing Pentek 7131 Digital Receiver
Configuration 2:
ExpressCard expansion chassis containing multiple Pentek 7131 Digial
Receivers
and IOTech 2100 Data Digital/Analog I/O cards
Dell Precision 690 with 2 Dual core 5160 3ghz Processors (Woodcrest)
8gb memory
Nvidia Quadro 4500
Multiple 15k SAS disks with both Perc5E and/or LSI Logic 8580E SAS Controller
Multiple slot expansion chassis connected 8x to the server containing
multiple cards
I have tried the RTAI approach with little success and have since switched to
Xenomai with limited success.
I currently am using the 2.6.17 kernel due to no success with patching the .19
kernel. When patching the .19 kernel for some reason the Real Time menu in the
configuration contains only the APM/ACPI warning and no menu options there
were however no errors when patching.
For the 2.6.17 kernel installation was fairly smooth but with one hiccup. For
some reason, the patch did not add CONFIG_X86_TCS to the configuration. I
added it manually by editing /arch/i386/Kconfig and adding an entry for
X86_TCS. This allowed me to successfully run the tests supplied with the
Xenomai distribution.
All the above has been done on the M65 Laptop which does have an ICH7 chipset.
I have tried both SMI enabled and disabled (ACPI SMI must remain enabled
inorder for video to work) with no change in performance. APM and CPU Freq
scaling are disabled as well as ACPI Processor. In this configuration the
tests would run to completion but with disturbing results. About ever 8-10
seconds the latency goes from somewhere between 1-50 micro seconds to over 700
microseconds. (I'm assuming the output is in microseconds). It continues this
in a very predictable manner. I have read the mailing list and have tried what
others have recommended with no change at all. (Shared memory is enabled).
Also, occasionally when I run the tests while running an X server it hard hangs
the system. I am not expecting the same type of problems to present themselves
on my Server but I have a very large interest in getting a portable system
working.
Are there any hard and fast configurations that I should try? Is there a
repository of .config files for differen kernel/hardware configurations?
Thanks in advance for your help. If all goes well, I hope to return the favor
to those who can bennefit from my experience.
Michael Freedman
_______________________________________________
Xenomai-help mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/xenomai-help
