Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] determining throughput

[Eric Blossom]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2005 at 05:25:12PM -0400, John M Daniel wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to determine what the throughput is with my
> configuration. I am trying to accomplish this by inputting
> a sinusoid and writing it to a file.  Having never dealt with 
> binary files, I am now stuck on reading in values from this 
> file to see if there are any discontinuities.  Below is my 
> attempt at trying to read in the values (pretty much copied from the
> gr_file_source.cc) which gives a segfault.  Once I can read in and
> access the values I plan to check them for continuity in chunks. 
> Pointers on whether or not this is the right approach or 
> if there is a much simpler answer to my question would be 
> greatly appreciated.  Thanks and let me know if there is any
> information that would help you help me ; )
> 

If your preferred hammer is Octave or Matlab, you might want to try
importing them using 
gnruadio-core/src/utils/read_{float,complex,int,short}_binary.m

I not sure I'm following your question.  Are you trying to benchmark
the throughput of a particular graph in gnuradio?  What are the input
and output sources?  Files?  USRP?

If they are files, the simplest thing is to set up a flow graph with a
file source on one end, a file sink on the other and the rest of your
signal processing in the middle.  Then use fg.run() to run the graph
until it completes.

Something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# my_benchmark.py

from gnuradio import gr

def build_graph():
  fg = gr.flow_graph()
  src = gr.file_source(gr.sizeof_float, "input.dat")
  # your stuff here...
  dst = gr.file_sink(gr.sizeof_float, "output.dat")
  fg.connect(src, dst)
  return fg

if __name__ == '__main__':
  fg = build_graph()
  fg.run()

Then:

  $ time ./my_benchmark.py

Depending on what you're doing in the middle you may be measuring your
system i/o performance, not GNU Radio's performance.

If you don't care about the output, use a gr.null_sink(gr.sizeof_float)

Eric