How to accelerate Software Update by FOE

Cazaban Laurence

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: SYSBIOS

Hello Everybody,

I actually work with an ARM3359 which is part of an ethercat network whit a KPA Master.

I am workin on the sofware update by FOE.

At the first time, I have made a transfer with mailbox whose size was 128 k : the delay for the complete transfer was 40 sec.

So I tried to increase the mailbox size in order to accelerate the transfer: I have configured a size of 256k. But nothing changes: the delay for the transfer was always of 40 sec...

I asked KPA why... They made wireshark trace and they conclude that "Slave signals that it is ready to receive new portion of FoE data only after 60 requests (on the average). It looks like a slave's specific behavior. So you could try to accelerate data processing by improving your slave's application ".

Is there anyone to help me on this subject ?

Thanks a lot,

Laurence

over 10 years ago

0 Biser Gatchev-XID over 10 years ago

TI__Guru**** 393215 points

Hi,

I will forward this to the ISDK team.

0 eugenio over 9 years ago

Expert 1505 points

Hi.

Which SDK version are you using?

I had the same issues with am335x_sysbios_ind_sdk_1.0.0.6 : slow communication over mailbox data (CoE & EoE; FoE shares the same acyclic slot in every ethercat frame)

So, I discovered that mailbox data is processed inside the "MainLoop" function, called inside a do-while loop, in tiescappl.c.

This loop has a delay of 1ms when I/O update is not running, and 100ms when running (!):

    if(u8Err == 0)
    {
        bRunApplication = TRUE;
        do
        {
            MainLoop();
            if ( !bEcatOutputUpdateRunning )
            {
    			Task_sleep (1);
            }
            else
            {
    			Task_sleep (100);
            }
        } while (bRunApplication == TRUE);
    }

So, mailbox communication turns from fast to extremely slow when ethercat master switches from "stop" to "run"!

I've replaced all these TaskSleep() with a TaskYeld(). This dramatically speeds up mailbox communication.

Keep in mind that if someone keeps preempting the task which calls MainLoop() function, you will end up with poor performances with FoE.

0 Cazaban Laurence over 9 years ago in reply to eugenio

Expert 1500 points

Hello Eugenio

Thanks for your answer!

I’m using am335x_sysbios_ind_sdk_1.0.0.8.

The code that runs MainLoop is not the same:

if(u8Err == 0)

{

bRunApplication = TRUE;

{

MainLoop();

#if !defined (EXEC_FROM_IRAM) && !defined (XIP_NOR)

if(get_app_reload_flag() == 0xAA)

{

if(pre_reload_acts() == 0)

{

BIOS_exit(100);

}

#endif

Task_yield();

} while (bRunApplication == TRUE);

}

So I don’t see any great delay that could explain the slow communication transfer by FOE.

Do you have another idea to explain that ?

Thanks a lot,

LAurence

0 eugenio over 9 years ago in reply to Cazaban Laurence

Expert 1505 points

Task_yield() yields to other tasks with the same priority.
So if you've other tasks in your system running with higher priority, maybe they are keeping your ethercat task from being executed at a reasonable frequency.
Try UIA instrumentation to analyse the Main_loop() execution timings.

Processors

Processors forum

How to accelerate Software Update by FOE