QUARC Win32 Target

One of the target types supported by QUARC is the Windows target. The Windows target currently supports Microsoft 32-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 running on any x86-compatible CPU. This section provides a general description of the Windows target in addition to limitations and requirements for this target type. Please use the following list to refer to each topic:

• Description
• Limitations
• Requirements

Description

The QUARC Win32 Target target is a soft real-time system. The Microsoft Windows operating system is not designed to guarantee that events are always processed within a particular timeframe, as in a hard real-time system. Thus, if an operation misses its deadline, it is considered "less" than correct but not an application or system failure. The system simply tolerates the missed deadline and performs the operation with delay. In real-time applications, this behaviour is undesirable since all operations must meet their deadlines. In particular, real-time control applications expect the sampling rate of the controller to be maintained, and no samples to be missed.

To minimize the delays in processing real-time events, the QUARC Win32 Target assigns the highest possible priority to a model's real-time code. The threads of the real-time code will preempt the threads of all other processes, including operating system processes performing important tasks, such as handling of mouse and keyboard input. Hence, a real-time process that executes for more than a brief interval may cause disk caches not to flush or the mouse to be unresponsive.

QUARC currently supports Microsoft Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The QUARC Win32 Target is designed for 32-bit Windows platforms. Refer to the QUARC Win64 Target for 64-bit Windows platform support.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations imposed on the Windows target. The following is a list of these limitations:

Real-Time Performance

The QUARC Win32 Target is a soft real-time system. For real-time processes with critical time constraints (e.g. advanced robotics), this target may not be suitable.

Sampling Rates

The QUARC system timebase has been substantially revised. Performance has been significantly improved for sample times of two milliseconds or slower on all platforms. For some systems, this improvement is also seen for one millisecond sample times.

For samples times faster than two milliseconds, QUARC now provides the option of using a "fast system timer" on multiprocessor or multicore systems. The fast system timer is much more CPU intensive than the standard timer but allows samples times faster than one millisecond and typically provides better performance than QUARC 1.1 for sample times of one millisecond. Hence, the one millisecond limit no longer exists for the Windows target on multiprocessor or multicore machines. However, because the fast system timer is CPU intensive and limited to multiprocessor or multicore machines, hardware-based timing is still recommended. For more information on the fast system timer option refer to the Code Generation Pane - QUARC page.

Hardware-based timing makes use of the timer on a data acquisition card. Hardware timers are accessible via Timebase blocks such as the HIL Timebase blocks. It is highly recommended that a hardware timebase be used on the Windows target, particularly on a single-core machine.

EtherCAT

EtherCAT devices are not currently supported by the QUARC Windows target. For information on the EtherCAT blocks, please refer to the EtherCAT Device Blocks section in the QUARC documentation.

Requirements

For the QUARC Win32 Target, the basic hardware and software requirements are discussed in the "QUARC Installation Guide" document included on the QUARC installation CD.

Certain devices supported by QUARC have their own set of customized blocks and need additional hardware or software to be installed on the target. These devices include the Nintendo Wiimote, Point Grey Research (PGR) Camera and the Schunk Gripper. For a complete list of devices supported by QUARC and their corresponding blocksets, please refer to the Device Blocks section. The table below includes the aforementioned devices with the corresponding hardware or software requirements:

In addition to the devices mentioned above, various data acquisition cards are also supported by QUARC. For more information about these cards and their software requirements, please refer to the QUARC Data Acquisition Card Support reference section in the QUARC documentation.

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