SPARTA: multiple signal processors for high-performance robot control

The authors describe the SPARTA (signal processor architecture for real-time applications) system, which is a hybrid computer development system including: (1) a program development environment on an IBM VM/CMS mainframe computer: (2) user interface and runtime support on an IBM PC; and (3) real-time computation and input/output using multiple IBM Hermes signal processors situated on the IBM PC bus. The program development environment includes the PLH high-level language for generating efficient real-time Hermes code. The runtime supports symbolic debugging, dynamic loading and linking, and synchronous switching of control algorithms during real-time program execution. The real-time environment includes a distributed operating system which supports foreground and background task execution and real-time data collection and display. The task switching overhead is 0.1 μs, nonpreemptive, and 1.0-3.7 μs when the context is changed by an interrupt (i.e. preemptive)