Predictable Scheduling for a Soft Modem

1. Predictable Scheduling for a Soft Modem Stefan Saroiu – University of Washington tzoompy@cs.washington.edu www.cs.washington.edu/homes/tzoompy/ Michael B. Jones – Microsoft Research mbj@microsoft.com research.microsoft.com/~mbj/

2. Modem Taxonomy • Traditional Modem Components: • Interface between analog phone lines and digital computer components – A/D and D/A • Signal modulations at different rates – on DSP • AT command set control and interpret - controller • Asynchronous interface between the modem and computer – UART • Some modems move functions to host software • Traditional modems – all on modem hardware • Controllerless modems (winmodems) – software controller, onboard signal processing • Soft modems – host CPU controller and signal processing

3. Why Study Soft Modems ? • Signal Processing done on host CPU: • requires predictable scheduling • requires low latency responses • While coexisting with other system activities • Soft Modem is a background real-time task • Successful in home computer market: • Low cost • Easy to update – software upgrade

4. Driver versions (INT/DPC/THR/RES) • Vendor version (INT) : 1. DMA transfers between A/D and D/A and physical memory 2. when enough data samples, the modem raises an interrupt 3. inside ISR, process incoming data and provide outgoing samples, before buffers exhausted • Signal processing routines executed: • in a DPC context (DPC) • in a thread context (THR) scheduled by NT scheduler • in a thread context (RES) scheduled by a real-time scheduler based on Rialto/NT

5. Interrupt Rate 3 different phases, interrupts very regular

6. Elapsed Times in ISR (INT) 1.8 ms on a Pentium II 450 with a repeatable worst case of 3.3 ms PC 99 recommends maximum time during which a driver-based modem disables interrupts should not exceed 100 µs

7. CPU Utilization 16% sustained CPU load

8. Elapsed Times in Queued DPC Interrupt durations now typically < 6µs But now long DPCs (as long as old interrupts) PC 99 recommends at any instant in time, the total execution time required for all DPCs that have been queued but not executed should not exceed 500 µs

9. Samples Pending to be Processed(INT & THR 24) Small relative to 512 sample buffer size

10. Coexisting Thread Latencies (INT) Minimum 8 µs, Maximum: 5313 µs Long distribution tail in INT version

11. Coexisting Thread Latencies (THR 24) Minimum 8 µs, Maximum: 2239 µs Nearly as good as with no modem

12. CPU Reservation Abstraction and Implementation • CPU Reservation abstraction: • ongoing reservation for X time units out of every Y units for a thread • Implementation limitation: • CPU Reservations must be multiples of milliseconds

13. Samples Pending to be Processed CPU RES 2ms every 8ms – 25 % Works well relative to 512 sample buffer size On-hook Dialing Training Connected

14. File Transfer Times Results for 10 copies of 200,000 bytes each For 1/8, 2/15, 3/17, 4/17, 7/20 no test passed

15. Modem Reservation Ranges Nonlinear behavior If period < 12.5ms, must get 16% to work If period > 12.5ms, (period – amount) >= 12.5ms must also hold

16. Conclusions • Signal Processing in interrupt context is: • Unnecessary • Detrimental to the predictability and latencies of the coexisting activities • The DPC version has similar problems • Threads help alleviate these problems • Modem runs well with real-time priorities and non-real-time competition • Real-time scheduler allows control over modem’s degree of interference with other time-sensitive activities