[hpsdr] min cpu requirements

[Chris Albertson]

--- John D'Ausilio <jdausilio at gmail.com> wrote:

> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
> 
> I'm getting to the point in my rover construction where I'm thinking
> about getting the SDR stuff going. I've been using random available
> laptops for logging, and I'm considering purchasing a pair of
> surplus/refurb laptops for permanent installation. Assuming I'm
> running under Linux, could anyone give me an idea of the minimum
> amount of horsepower needed for RX only (at this point) operation
> with
> a SoftRock 7 looking at the 28Mhz IF and Janus/Ozy for the interface?
> Would I be able to get away with, say, a Pentium 2 and 256M of
> memory?

The big questions are 
1) With what software?  
2) What else will the software be doing?  Driving a real-time
display?  Running a network stack

In the best case you are running software you have custom written for
this application and all it is doing is reading a text based user
interface and sending out an 8Ksps audio stream,  It that case, The
Pentium 2 is a bit of overkill   If you write this you's almost
certainly be using FFTW.  So look at the benchmarks at fftw.org and see
what's needed.

Th new FT-450 has shown us that you can "do SDR" with a 16-bit integer
only processor running at 400Mhz.  But that is with custom code and no
operating system and no graphic display


Take a look at some of the real-time versions of Linux.    You likely
don't want a "hard real time" solution but one with a scheduler tuned
for this kind of work could help a lot

That said it is so much easier to do the development on a very fast
machine then decide on the target hardware after you have some real
performance numbers.


Chris Albertson
  Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278 at yahoo.com
  Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson at aero.org
  KG6OMK


       
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