Going back to my 8080 machine code day's and older PC understandings.
Hardware IRQ's Priority is still for the Clock/Timer first, the Keyboard
and others are down the line. There are ways to prioritize a Serial port
higher. Maybe this can be used to input faster a key line. However the
Virtual Radio processes (software) still have to generate the Xmit. signals.
In time, possibly the development of Macro routine(s) at a lower level
language will make CW or VOX response faster. The speed depends on many
factors.
Three of them are:
1.) Compiler methods (how well it compiles), 2.) Size of Program, 3.) Speed
of Hardware.
Given time it will get better.
Higher level languages primarily use pre determined standard routines (lower
levels) to call functions on hardware and other software to make them run.
It is possible by software guru's to generate custom lower level (fast)
routine(s) that the compiler can use.
Much standardization has to occur before such code(s) is written.
I know it will happen.
I am willing to wait.
Martin S. W7RU
At 10:14 AM 2/28/2006, Bob McGwier N4HY wrote:
It can be implemented in hardware and it should be along with the proper
keyer and sidetone where they both belong.
I respectfully disagree. Isn't the whole point of a software radio with a
minimalist hardware to do as much as possible in software. The SDR1000
itself is essentially a zero delay system.. all it does is translate I/Q
baseband to/from some useful RF frequency.
So the challenge is in doing these functions in software, or, more to the
point, trying to do what is a fairly "hard real time" kind of application
in a "non hard-real time" environment (e.g. Windows). An existence proof
that it can be done is provided by such things as games, which have to
respond to game controller/keyboard inputs in millisecond type response
times.
It may well be that the system architecture that's evolved for the SDR1000
software inherently cannot do this sort of thing, but that certainly
doesn't mean that it can't be done, or shouldn't be attempted. Perhaps
there are things that the current approach cannot and will not ever do,
but
that's just fine, as long as it does a good job of the things that it CAN
do.
In fact, this is one of the beauties of the SDR1000, it literally is
limited only by the inventiveness of the software developers. Sure, it
might require writing Windows I/O device drivers to meet the real time
constraints, but that's a problem that's been faced by lots of people
developing software for the PC platform before. It might suck up an
amazing amount of processor resources (because you have to poll some I/O
line for reading the key), but maybe that points towards using a dedicated
PC for those sorts of uses. With diskless PC mobos being in the <$100
range, that's starting to be competitive with the cost of a fancy keyer
for
a conventional rig.
I have always thought that the optimum solution is one where the non-real
time UI is on some normal user style computer, but that the hard real-time
processing is on a PC dedicated to the radio. The convenience and consumer
price points of the PC platform for the DSP is just too attractive to pass
up, compared to some hybrid scheme (e.g. using a DSP Eval board or
something for the DSP).
Jim, W6RMK
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