Real-time computing of special algorithms with a DSP-based board

Abstract

The on-line computation of special algorithms, as power-law for particle identification in nuclear physics, is a basic problem requiring real-time computational resources that have to fit time constraints, due to the randomness of nuclear events, and assure correctness. Present work concentrates on the possibility to use a low cost commercially available DSP boards for this purpose. The used DSP board computes in real-time transcendental functions expanded in Chebychev polynomial series with assembler routines ad hoc written, in order to perform the identification of the charged particles emitted in nuclear reactions. In particular a presentation of an emulation framework is described where Assembler DSP algorithms are tested at full speed, while input and output are tested at low velocity, by using two host PC, simulating peripherals for the I/O data.