[Oberon] Volatile variables in Oberon

[Skulski, Wojciech]

Joerg:

  thank you. This is nice. 

Let's talk of an array. The array access will be done the same way by stepping "c" in a loop. Since I am using SYSTEM, it has to be done inside a "low level module".

Now imagine I want to use my array in a high-level code. Imagine, that I have developed a nice module DSP.Mod of DSP functions. For example, I want to find some features in the array, like for example impulses. I have my own favorite algorithm. I wrote a function DSP.FindPeaks (arr: ArrayPTR).

Now I need to pass the array to the function FindPeaks. So I export the array from the low-level module, and I use the array as an argument to FindPeaks. Great!

I notice that the export is read-only. No problem. 

Now in my DSP.FindPeaks I have a FOR loop. I access the array element like this:

  tmp := arr [i];

Ooops. I cannot do this because I must access the array with GET.

No problem. In the low-level module I make a copy of the volatile array to a regular Oberon array which I export to be used in DSP.FindPeaks.

Ooops. My waveform is 32k samples. So I must copy 32k integers in order to use the array in my high level function. It is inefficient. 

An efficient algorithm needs to be performed without copying the array. But how can I implement the high-level algorithm, if I cannot access the array elements in the high-level code in the first place?

What am I missing?

Wojtek
-----------------------------------------

And in Oberon
   VAR c: BYTE;
   SYSTEM.GET(UART0UDR, c);

Have fun
Jörg

Am 30.07.2016 um 19:00 schrieb Magnus Karlsson <magnus at saanlima.com<mailto:magnus at saanlima.com>>:

Your C code seems to a bit convoluted if just want to access a register.
This is quite often done by defining the registers as volatile pointers like this:

Register address definitions (in this case for a UART):
#define UART0_UDR      (*(volatile  uint8_t *)(0x44000000))
#define UART0_UCR      (*(volatile uint16_t *)(0x44000004))
#define UART0_UBRR     (*(volatile uint16_t *)(0x44000008))

You can then access registers like this (read UART data register):
uint8_t c = UART0_UDR;

Magnus

On 7/29/2016 11:06 PM, Skulski, Wojciech wrote:

Chris:



But Oberon variables are not mapped to registers that can be changed "from
the other end". The explicit operations SYSTEM.GET and SYSTEM.PUT are used
when you want to transfer data between a peripheral register (mapped to an
absolute memory location) and Oberon variables.


 Pardon my C on this mailing list. The point I want to make is that it is ugly.

Here is a sample of my C program where I am reading from an absolute memory location mapped to an FPGA register. The "target" is an integer, which is then used to retrieve a value from the FPGA. The address is not constant, but I can make it constant using a #define.

 long target; /* long int holds addr, needs a typecast */
 short value;
 short *virt_saddr;     /* typed pointer to 16-bit short */

 virt_saddr = (short *) target; /* convert target to pointer */
 value = * virt_saddr;            /* read value from address   */

I would prefer to write in C something like the following:

 short value at address; /* address is constant, which is most often the case*/

In Oberon it would be something like this:

 CONST address = ....;
  VAR value: INTEGER AT address; (* address must be constant*)

Now the question, is this unreasonable?

Wojtek
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