Re: firewire video on RTEMS-4.6.x-MVME5500

[Kate Feng <feng1@bnl.gov>]

Mark Rivers wrote:

Does the camera come with it's own display ?  Or do you use EPICS CA for
display ?  If the real data throughput to the EPICS display is 334 Mbits/sec,
you should see 42 Mega Bytes/sec of high traffic using the Window network
perfromace monitor.  
    

 
There is no EPICS involved with this.  It is using the manufacturers display program.
 
  

What's the protocol the camera use for tranferring the data to the host PC ?
I thought it's the GigE network.  
    

 
It is TCP/IP over Ethernet.
 
  

If so, you should see at least 334 Mbits/sec
data throughput on the window network performance monitor.  Something
does not make sense to me.
    

 
The reason that the Windows network performance monitor does not see this traffic is that the camera manufacturer provide their own Ethernet driver for Windows.  This driver grabs all camera packets before Windows sees them, and sends them straight to the camera application.  This is a technique used by most GigE cameras, it greatly reduces the CPU load.  It is restricted to a subset of available GigE Ethernet chip sets, but seems to support all of the ones (Intel, etc.) that I have run into.

Thus, the display rate you see is not necessary 334 Mbits/sec.  The eyes
can not tell.  No one knows exactly how fast the display rate is if
there is  no 3rd party monitor software to verify.

Kate

 
Mark

 

________________________________

From: Kate Feng [mailto:feng1@bnl.gov]
Sent: Thu 10/11/2007 8:26 AM
To: Mark Rivers
Cc: Daron Chabot; rtems-users@rtems.org; tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: firewire video on RTEMS-4.6.x-MVME5500


Mark Rivers wrote:


	> Does the window has any tool to measure the actual
	> network throughput of the  1GHz ?  Or do you have any
	> H/W tool to measure it ?  If so, how many Mega bytes/sec
	> of throughput ?
	 
	I don't see a tool in their software to measure the network throughput.  I can do a simple calculation for the full frame size at 30 FPS 8-bit mode:
	 
	 1360.*1024.*30.*8 = 334 Mbits/second.

	 
	This is the real data throughput to the display, and does not include any protocol overhead.
	 
	The Norpix software includes a replacement Ethernet driver on Windows which looks at all frames before the Windows network stack gets them.  The camera frames go directly to the camera application, and only other frames are passed to the Windows network stack.  So using the Window network perfomance monitor shows virtually no traffic at all.

Does the camera come with it's own display ?  Or do you use EPICS CA for
display ?  If the real data throughput to the EPICS display is 334 Mbits/sec,
you should see 42 Mega Bytes/sec of high traffic using the Window network
perfromace monitor.  If it shows no traffic at all, then the display could be
only 1 frame/second (e.g. 11 Mbits/sec) while the data transfer is 334 Mbits/sec.

What's the protocol the camera use for tranferring the data to the host PC ?
I thought it's the GigE network.  If so, you should see at least 334 Mbits/sec
data throughput on the window network performance monitor.  Something
does not make sense to me.

Kate




	> Can the window run remote client ?
	 
	I don't think so.  But there is a development library to write your own client.
	 
	Mark
	 



________________________________

		From: Kate Feng [mailto:feng1@bnl.gov] 
		Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:43 PM
		To: Mark Rivers
		Cc: Daron Chabot; rtems-users@rtems.org; tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
		Subject: Re: firewire video on RTEMS-4.6.x-MVME5500
		
		
		Mark Rivers wrote:
		

			I recently got a GigE camera from Prosilica.  It is 1360x1024 resolution.  At 8-bits the StreamPix software from Norpix is able to acheive frame rates of 30Hz at full resolution, and 52 Hz when it is 2x2 binned to 680x512.  This is under Windows, using the single GigE port on the PC, with the camera and PC connected directly to a GigE switch (which also is connected to the rest of the LAN).


		Does the window has any tool to measure the actual
		network throughput of the  1GHz ?  Or do you have any
		H/W tool to measure it ?  If so, how many Mega bytes/sec
		of throughput ?
		
		Can the window run remote client ?
		
		Regards,
		Kate
		

			 
			Mark
			 


________________________________

				From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Kate Feng
				Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 10:17 AM
				To: Daron Chabot; rtems-users@rtems.org; tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
				Subject: Re: firewire video on RTEMS-4.6.x-MVME5500
				
				
				Daron Chabot wrote:
				

					Sorry for not being more clear: I am only interested in the EPICS and EDM applications you've created for displaying the video, not in any of the RTEMS-related code.

				I did not change any EDM applications or EPICS base.  The protocol
				is CA.   The optimization is implemented at RTEMS device driver
				and IIDC1394 library layers. The BSP is RTEMS-MVME5500.
				The driver does not have to be linked to EPICS.
				It is just another real-time application with the RTEMS-MVME5500
				BSP.  It triggers the camera at 30 fps and  display at 30Hz
				simultaneously for the 1024x768x8bit mode (video mode) even under the
				limited 100MHz network bandwidth and indeterministic network environment. 
				Yes,  in the 100MHz NIC, the actual network throughput is not 
				30Hzx1024x768x8 bits. But it is greater than 10Hz.  Thus, the system does
				not have to run in a private network. I do not believe it
				will  be slower with a non-EPICS application.  
				
				

					Here at the CLS we're using linux-based soft IOCs to communicate with Flea and Flea2 cameras.
					 
					We're having difficulty in achieving video frame rates greater than about 10 Hz at 640x480 resolution. I'm interested to know how you are getting such fine performance (aside from using RTEMS :-) ).
					 


				Perhaps I will have the optimization written in a publication, so that
				hopefully it can help the Linux or vxWorks users.  If so,  will you
				feedback to this list regarding how much improvement you achieved
				in the Linux driver ?
				
				Regards,
				Kate