Quanser's complete industrial Rapid Control Prototyping system provides all the elements you need - including real-time software, H.I.L. board, high-performance, multi-channel linear amplifier - plus TMW products (MATLAB/Simulink/RTW). As a TMW value added reseller (VAR), we make it easy for the customer who wants an absolute turnkey system, has a dedicated project or a new venture. The full package includes:

• High-performance PC (includes Intel Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology)
• The MathWorks MATLAB/Simulink/RTW software
• Quanser Q8 Hardware-in-the-Loop (H.I.L.) control board
• Quanser Multi-Channel Linear Amplifier
• MS Visual C++ compiler
• WinCon software (with Ardence’s RTX)

Latency Histogram:
The histogram depicts the tight latency distribution characteristic of hard real-time systems delivered by QStudioRP. Latency measurements comprised of 1 Million samples were acquired at a 10 kHz rate and the data was divided into 0.06 ms increments.

Latency (µs)
Min. 4.08
Max. 12.21
Mean 4.4899
Median 4.47
Mode 4.74
Standard Deviation 0.2503

Jitter (µs) (Abs. value of the latency minus the median latency)
Mean 0.1945
Max 7.74
Min. 0

Control Loop Example:
The chart illustrates the interrupt jitter, interrupt latency, hardware I/O overhead, and algorithm computation time for four representative control systems. The interrupt jitter represents the variation in interrupt latency. Hence, the chart shows a constant minimum interrupt latency (in turquoise) with an additional interrupt jitter (in cyan) to demonstrate the variation between the maximum and minimum interrupt latency measured. (For a definition of these terms, refer to "What is Real Time?"). The measurements are taken over four runs.

Each run comprised the execution of the control algorithm in real time for 20 seconds, at a 1 kHz sample rate. Thus, each shaded area in the figure represents 80,000 measurements. Time measurements have a 60 nanosecond resolution. The 20 x 20 matrix squared operation requires 8000 multiplications and 7600 additions. At less than 25 microseconds to compute, the QStudioRP system averaged 1.6 nanoseconds per floating-point operation.

Testing Methodology
Full test results and models are available for review from Quanser. Please contact us at: infoindustry@quanser.com

Hardware configuration:
P4 Intel 3.2 GHz PC with HT enabled
Asus P4C-E-DX, 800 MHz FSB
2x 512 MB PC-3200 400 MHZ DDR RAM
Gainward GEFORCE4 MX440 64MB DDR AGP8X TVO LP

Software configuration:
Windows XP SP1
TMW R13.1
Visual C++ .NET
WinCon 4.1
RTX 5.5 RT (dedicated processor mode, dual processor)

Modifications:
All non-essential Windows services were disabled.
High-level graphic features were disabled.