Turbo UMAC CPU Performance

Dear all,

I have Turbo UMAC CPU (160MHz and 240MHz) with on-board USB2/Ethernet Communications boards (w/ DPRAM option) to be used with high-speed 3,5 axes cnc applications. Roughly speaking the targeted block rate should be around 1000 blocks/sec. Now I would like to know expert's opinion for the following questions:

1) Can the communication channel (host<->UMAC) become the bottleneck or does it matter at all which option (USB/Ethernet/PC-104) to choose to satisfy above mentioned block rate requirements?

2) The best (fastest) way to communicate with the host (Xp/Win 7)computer? Is it USB 2.0 with remote pc or should one use the old good pc/104 (isa) with 3rd party (UMAC mounted) high-performance embedded pc/104 card pc (with hard-drive)?

3) Some ball park figures for relative /max absolute throughputs (USB 2.0 vs. vs Ethernet vs. pc/104) when PMAC-NC PRO2 is used as a client?

4) If pc/104 were the best option can I use pc/104-plus form-factor pc with UMAC Turbo?

Thank you in advance!

Regards,

Tuomo

Dear all,

 

I have Turbo UMAC CPU (160MHz and 240MHz) with on-board USB2/Ethernet Communications boards (w/ DPRAM option) to be used with high-speed 3,5 axes cnc applications. Roughly speaking the targeted block rate should be around 1000 blocks/sec. Now I would like to know expert's opinion for the following questions:

Delta Tau may be able to give you specifics on the actual data transfer rates, but we were unable to get any where near 1000 blocks/sec with either USB or Ethernet for our PMAC NC. For us the best solution was the PCI bus in an industrial computer (Quad Core, separate graphicscard, lots of ram). The PC104 stuff is just too old and slow. a PCI bus Turbo PMAC can easily sustain 1000 blocks/second 5 axis. Remember to get the larger memory version.

Jeff is correct that Ethernet and USB will not get you to 1000 blocks/sec. However, PC/104 (the stack version of the ISA bus) has been used successfully at well over 1000 blocks/sec. It is almost as fast as the PCI bus interface. As Jeff suggests, you must make sure there is no other bottleneck that slows you down.

The Power PMAC CPU for the UMAC, with its 1Gbps Ethernet interface streaming directly into the processor, has been used for multiple thousands of blocks per second.

Hi,

Thank you for your quick answer!

However, a few clarifications around the topic is still needed...

The PC/104 BUS INTERFACE (30A-603766-OPT) + DPR is the best (fastest) opt for an UMAC TURBO CONTROLLER CPU 160Mhz/240MHz. Correct?

And when the aforementioned card is used with 3rd party UMAC mounted pc/104 card (>1,8GHz) w/ hd, it should be a good fit for 3+ axes high speed machining with 1000+ block rates. Correct?

I'm planning to start with a std PMAC-NC Pro2 as a client and later on to customize it, if needed.

QUESTION: As for other bottleneks Jeff mentioned, how much UMAC memory is needed for "normal" (3 axes linear or circle interpolation w/ lookahead, possible tool compensation) high speed machining (3 axes + index table) at 1000 block/s throughput when used with DPR + pc/104? Is the std option 5E0 (160 MHz DSP56311 CPU w/128Kx24 internal memory, 128Kx24 SRAM compiled/ assembled program memory, 128Kx24 SRAM user data memory, and 1Mx8 flash memory) enough? This is the memory opt I currently have.

QUESTION: If more memory is needed, how much does it cost (ball park figure) to update my UMAC TURBO CONTROLLER card?

QUESTION: Is the pc/104 bus UMAC TURBO is using compatible with any pc/104 plus pc card? I quess it should be, because pc/104 plus is ment to be backward compatible, but need to know before make any decisions.

This combo is, of course, second to Power UMAC, but I happen to own 4 brand new 160MHz cards + 1 240MHz card and would like to proceed with them, if feasible...

Regards,

Tuomo

Jeff is correct that Ethernet and USB will not get you to 1000 blocks/sec. However, PC/104 (the stack version of the ISA bus) has been used successfully at well over 1000 blocks/sec. It is almost as fast as the PCI bus interface. As Jeff suggests, you must make sure there is no other bottleneck that slows you down.

 

The Power PMAC CPU for the UMAC, with its 1Gbps Ethernet interface streaming directly into the processor, has been used for multiple thousands of blocks per second.

Tuomo:

Yes, the UMAC CPU card with the PC/104 interface and DPRAM is the best configuration for fast communications.

I think with the large internal memory of the 160 MHz processor, you will have enough to do a good NC application. You will not gain that much memory by going to the larger external memory (because there is not the mapping to support all of the large internal memory and large external memory). The additional memory is about an $800 additional cost.

A 1.8GHz PC processor should easily be fast enough to stream the 1000 blocks per second that you want. While PC/104-Plus is "supposed to be" backward-compatible with the original PC/104, our experience is that this is not always true.

Curt, Thank's a lot!

Regards,

Tuomo

Tuomo:

 

Yes, the UMAC CPU card with the PC/104 interface and DPRAM is the best configuration for fast communications.

 

I think with the large internal memory of the 160 MHz processor, you will have enough to do a good NC application. You will not gain that much memory by going to the larger external memory (because there is not the mapping to support all of the large internal memory and large external memory). The additional memory is about an $800 additional cost.

 

A 1.8GHz PC processor should easily be fast enough to stream the 1000 blocks per second that you want. While PC/104-Plus is "supposed to be" backward-compatible with the original PC/104, our experience is that this is not always true.