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Date:      Thu, 11 Jun 1998 09:45:30 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
To:        jb@cimlogic.com.au (John Birrell)
Cc:        mike@smith.net.au, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: floating point usage within the kernel - howto ?
Message-ID:  <199806110745.JAA22102@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
In-Reply-To: <199806110659.QAA18095@cimlogic.com.au> from "John Birrell" at Jun 11, 98 04:59:16 pm

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> Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> > they want to run a P-I-D controller (and more generic controllers
> > if this goes well) to control a few motors, for didactical purposes.
> 
> What update rate do they need that requires the code to run in the kernel?

whenever i ask this question the answer is invariably "as fast as
possible".

In any case, we don't have a real target application, it is just
a framework that must be adapted to different apps, so i would
expect a max rate of 1 KHz to cover all practical purposes, with
100Hz being sufficient in many cases.

> If they want to program like DOS, that's what they should use. 8-)

you see, apart from the network-accessibility problem, they are wasting
a lot of resources using DOS, because they tend to write non-portable
code in assembler and spend way too much time in building the user
interface.

I thought to propose them a different approach that could be more
flexible.  Once they learn to work under unix, and the controller
and the UI are kept well separated by a kernel barrier, it is
easier to reuse their software, and even replace the (software)
controller with a real one.

(and, last not least, robotics people tend to have a
lot of money just because their hardware costs so much :)

	cheers
	luigi

-----------------------------+--------------------------------------
Luigi Rizzo                  |  Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione
email: luigi@iet.unipi.it    |  Universita' di Pisa
tel: +39-50-568533           |  via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy)
fax: +39-50-568522           |  http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/
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