FAST SCALAR DATA BUFFERING INTERFACE IN LINUX 2.6 KERNEL
A. Homs · 2011
Key instrumentation devices like counter/timers, analog-to-digital converters and encoders provide scalar data input. Many of them allow fast acquisitions, but do not provide hardware triggering or buffering mechanisms. A Linux 2.4 kernel driver called Hook was developed at the ESRF as a generic software-triggered buffering interface. This work presents the portage of the ESRF Hook interface to the Linux 2.6 kernel. The interface distinguishes two independent functional groups: trigger event generators and data channels. Devices in the first group create software events, like hardware interrupts generated by timers or external signals. On each event, one or more device channels on the second group are read and stored in kernel buffers. The event generators and data channels to be read are fully configurable before each sequence. Designed for fast acquisitions, the Hook implementation is well adapted to multi-CPU systems, where the interrupt latency is notably reduced. On heavily loaded dual-core PCs running standard (non real time) Linux, data can be taken at 1 KHz without losing events. Additional features include full integration into the /sys virtual file-system and hot-plug devices support.