Intel Celeron 2980U real time support

[velimatti]

I was looking https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/supplemental/08/requirements-for-desktop-pcs-as-phar-lap...

Is the Intel Celeron 2980U (Haswell architecture) supported by 8.0+ or 2014+?

Thanks

Veli-Matti

[Bob_Schor]

The table seems to suggest that it would work, but why are you using a PC as a Real-Time box?  Why not use some of NI's data acquisition hardware (which you'll have to buy, anyway, right?) in one of their Real-Time chassis?  I'm pretty sure there are a lot more of these types of systems (and expertise) than there are for PC-as-Real-Time setups ...

Bob Schor

[Alexander_Sobolev]

When I was working with it some time ago, for a good range of applications real-time PC was much more affordable solution than PXI and more powerfull than cRIO, sbRIO.

DAQ board price is the same for PXI and PCI(e) and pc based on 3 year old CPU is 300$ - compare to PXI chassis of comparable configuration.

Did it change?

Though this processor is mobile, so it becomes even more reasonable without daq boards. Multiple sensors with USB/serial interface around one spot I suggest.

Not as robust as real RT solutions, but why not...

[Bob_Schor]

Valid point.  I've not tried to buy a PXI system recently ...

BS

[Bob_Schor]

Wait a minute -- our typical PXI system (they're pretty old, the cards are PXI, not PXIe, don't know how much difference in price/performance that makes) have a Counter/Timer card (for the accurate clock), a 96-line DIO, a 16-channel 16-bit A/D converter (actually a Multi-function card) and a D/A card (I don't remember how many channels, but also 16-bit).  The PXI chassis routes the timing signals to all of the other boards -- how do you do this in a PC?  Also, doesn't this mean that you need at least 4 PCIe free slots?  And they are probably the "wide" variety -- is this a common motherboard configuration?  [I was able to find some with multiple PCIe slots, designed for dual video cards for gamers, but now we're talking "not so cheap" ...]

So "it depends".  If you are doing "simple things" (like only A/D sampling at rates up to 1KHz or so), you could probably do it OK with a PC RT system, but then, again, you could probably plug that card into your Windows machine and do almost as well (using the hardware on the A/D card to do your timing, and LabVIEW's parallelism to gather all the data).  If you want "hardware-in-the-loop" or simultaneous Sampling and Controlling, you may "get what you pay for" ...

BS (who fortunately "inherited" a number of PXI systems and has at least one "spare" ...)

[Alexander_Sobolev]

PC has RTSI for clocks routing -  8 channels is enough in many applications.

NI still has PCI boards without PCIe analogs (PCI-6132 2.5 MHz 14 bit 4 channel simultaneos sampling)

PCI-6602 8 chanel counter (PCIe-6612 has recently appeared but it will not work in LV 8.5 or around) 

Most of the boards are for PCIe-x1, there are plenty of 4 PCIe boards  ~100$., it is harder to find a new motherboard with 3 and above PCI slots than with a small number of PCIe slots.

It is real-time so system does not need external video card and its slot is free for PCIe daq board.

I agree PXI is for larger scale industrial applications. But for low-medium grade RT PC can be a valid choice. 

I do not think that program cycle will be slower on RT PC - it needs special solutions in motherboard design, and NI is not a major player in that area. PXI controller descriptions do not say anything about special motherboard design solutions (except form-factor). So with the same memory-CPU calculations loop jitter and rate should be very close.

Though my experience with RT PC and PXIs has not been updated in the last 3 years, so things could have changed in favour of PXI. But not the price =(

[Sam_Sharp]

NI are obviously going to push PXI on their own hardware over trying to set up your own PC as an RT target - PXI is a lot higher cost but it does come with a lot of advantages (e.g. guaranteed compatibility, ruggedness, better support, convenient form factor etc.).

I think one of the main differences between PXI/PXIe and PCIe/PCI as a bus standard is that PXI has additional timing/synchronisation/triggering capabilities.