Odd Timer Behaviour

QNX DEVELOPERS Realtime and Embedded
1

Hello,

I am writing a real-time control loop. In this loop I used InterruptAttach() to attach to INT0 (timer at 100us) with an handler that returns a timer event every 500us.

In my control loop, I do a InterruptWait(), I make some calculations and then do a hardware call to output to DAC. Using ClockCycles() I determined that my control loop is usual around 500us ±10us (which is fine). Except every now and then my DAC takes a bit extra time which pushes my control loop to > 510us. The weird thing is, the calculations in my control loop (including DAC) is <200us long. So even if DAC is 40us longer, it shouldn’t make my overall control loop >510us. Second weird thing, right after the time instance where my control loop >510us, the next time instance is always much < 500us, such that the average time between the two instances is ~500us.

Is the timed interrupt screwing up, or is ClockCycles()? Does anyone have any guesses to what’s happening? Is there any way to fix this?

Thanks.

struct sigevent timevent;
volatile unsigned timctr;

//Interrupt Handler for INT0 set to 100us by calling ClockPeriod()
const struct sigevent *handler (void *area, int id)
{
if(++timctr == 5)
return (&timevent);
else
return(NULL);
}

//Control loop
uint64_t cps, calcClock, loopClock;
float fBuffer[NUM_SAMPLES][2];

cps = SYSPAGE_ENTRY(qtime)->cycles_per_sec;

for (i=0;i<NUM_SAMPLES;i++)
{

loopClock=ClockCycles();

InterruptWait(0, NULL);

calcClock = ClockCycles();

//Do calculations
…

//Call Hardware to output DAC
…

//Save timed values to buffer
fBuffer[i][0]=(ClockCycles()-calcClock)/cps;
fBuffer[i][1]=(ClockCycles()-loopClock)/cps;

}

//Output values
for (i=0;i<NUM_SAMPLES;i++)
printf("%f %f\n", fBuffer[i][0], fBuffer[i][1]);

*** Output example ****
0.000064 0.000498
0.000063 0.000492
0.000065 0.000500
0.000140 0.000584
0.000066 0.000433
0.000064 0.000497
0.000064 0.000506

2

The value for loopClock are stead at around 500us expect for 584 and then 433. So it seems to me your process didn’t get the CPU right after the hardware interrupt occured. Either a higher priority (or one with FIFO scheduling) got the CPU after the interrupt. It’s also possible a higher priority interrupt preempted interrupt 0.

You can use the system profiler to figure it out.

Also to get better precision you coud replace:

fBuffer[i][0]=(ClockCycles()-calcClock)/cps;
fBuffer[i][1]=(ClockCycles()-loopClock)/cps;

by:

tmp = ClockCycles();

fBuffer[i][0]=(tmp-calcClock)/cps;
fBuffer[i][1]=(tmp-loopClock)/cps;

That way if your program gets preempted in between the two calculation, it will not show in the computed value.