Operation Theory 434.1.4 Software Real-time Motion Control KernelFor motion control kernel, there are three ways to accomplish it.They are DSP-based, ASIC based, and software real-time based.A motion control system needs an absolutely real-time controlcycle and the calculation on controller must provide a control dataat the same cycle. If not, the motor will not run smoothly. Manymachine makers will use PC’s computing power to do this. Theycan use simply a feedback counter card and a voltage output orpulse output card to make it. This method is very low-end andtakes much software effort. For sure their realtime performance,they will use a real-time software on the system. It increases thecomplexity of the system too. But this method is the most flexibleway for a professional motion control designers. Most of thesemethods are on NC machines.4.1.5 DSP Based Motion Control KernelA DSP-based motion controller kernel solves real-time softwareproblem on computer. DSP is a micro-processer itself and allmotion control calculations can be done on it. There is no real-timesoftware problem because DSP has its own OS to arrange all theprocedures. There is no interruption from other inputs or contextswitching problem like Windows based computer. Although it hassuch a perfect performance on real-time requirements, its calcula-tion speed is not as fast as PC’s CPU at this age. Besides, thesoftware interfacing between DSP based controller’s vendors andusers are not easy to use. Some controller vendors provide somekind of assembly languages for users to learn and some controllervendors provide only a handshake documents for users to use.Both ways are not easy to use. No doubtly, DSP based controllerprovide a better way than software kernel for machine makers tobuild they applications.4.1.6 ASIC Based Motion Control KernelAn ASIC-base motion control kernel is a fair way between soft-ware kernel and DSP kernel. It has no real-time problem becauseall motion functions are done via ASIC. Users or controller’s ven-dors just need to set some parameters which ASIC requires andthe motion control will be done easily. This kind of motion control
