Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Minimal Hardware to Run Gnuradio on?

[Tom Huppi]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, David Carr wrote:

> Tom,
>
> I don't see whats wrong with that at all.  As long as your disks can
> handle the transfer rate you're set.

Ya, that was one of my bigger concerns, especially if several
machines were reading while writing was happening (raw and
possibly processed data.)  I've been impressed with how well
striping works, at least on SCSI systems, and guestimated that the
potential problems here could be mitigated to a resonable extent.

The other concern I have is how Via's southbridge handles GigE.
If they cheat and load things on the PCI bus, I could see it
being overloaded.  Have not been able to find any info or
experiance on this issue yet.

> Even for really high rate USB transfers (40MB/sec) I see around
> 10% utilization on a P4 2.4.

That's good to know (and surprising to me!)  Do I understand
correctly that this is the load in processing, say, hdtv in the
form output by the USRP into an mpeg stream (or whatever)?

I would expect that some types of processing are significanty more
CPU intensive than others.  Would you concur, and if so, can you
put a vauge, order-of-mag type estimate to the issue?

> Also,
> some of my initial research actually streamed the captured data from the
> capture machine over a network to other more gutsy machines.  I don't
> know if that's an option in you application.

Frankly, I don't have an 'application' per se.  May fuzzy longish
term dream is to have a device which could scan around looking for
interesting things 'floating around' and convert them to a form
which would amuse me :)

Thanks,

 - Tom


> -David Carr
>
> Tom Huppi wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 15 Dec 2004, David Bengtson wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>What are the minimum hardware requirement for Gnu Radio? I'm thinking in
> >>terms of a Arm7/Thumb controller. If you try to build a portable thing
> >>with Gnu Radio, it would be good to have something smaller than a laptop
> >>that it runs on
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I can't answer your question, but I think it's probably safe to
> >say that it depends a great deal on what one is trying to do, and
> >it seems that there are a lot of possibilities with a 'system' as
> >general as GnuRadio.
> >
> >Lately I've been looking to upgrade my hardware with an eye toward
> >making use of GnuRadio for as much as may become possible.  I'd
> >be interested in hearing anyones opinions about whether my ideas
> >are nuts or not.
> >
> >I've become interested in the mini-ITX form factor (having sworn
> >never to touch a laptop again.)  Via has just started to release a
> >chipset (cn400) which looks OK on paper.  I expect it to support
> >USB2 well, GigE, and SATA with hardware RAID0 all through the
> >southbridge.  Their CPU's have always been lame, and I sense that
> >this is the most important thing to many potential GnuRadio
> >applications.  Here's my thoughts:
> >
> >- Stream all data from the USB to disk.  500G should hold hours
> >worth by my back of the envelope calcs in worst case, and maybe
> >the lame CPU would be powerful enough to do some initial crunching
> >to extend this.
> >
> >- Have the potential to process the data with 0->n higher powered
> >machines over the network, and at a time of one's choosing.
> >
> >Does this paradigm strike anyone as potentially possible,
> >assuming enough development work eventually occurs?
> >
> >BTW, here's a diagram of Via's chipset:
> >
> > http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/c-series/cn400/
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> > - Tom
> >
> >
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> >
> >
>