Test Points


The simulator is both a graphical application and a web application. Up to the moment results can be retrieved by connecting to the simulator's url:

Most results are reported in tabular form with results from each node reported in the corresponding cell. Unoccupied cells are blank. The first page lists available reports which are as follows:

  • nodes -- Lits node names for every occupied position. Node names consist of a node type name (See NodeTypes) and an integer NodeNumber. See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/nodes.html

  • wires -- Lists the busses to which each tile connects. The Bus object represents a segment of an electrically continuous bus. There are two versions, HorzBus and VertBus. These differ only in the nomencature of their interconnect: left & right for the horizontal and up & down for the vertical. Unconnected edges of a node print as "null". See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/wires.html

  • signal -- The Bus objects represent some difusion of charge through lumped resistance. Should two nodes transmit at the same time only the one with the strongest signal will be heard. Since there are two busses crossing a none, signal strength is quoted twise. See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/signal.html

  • counts -- The low level networking code keeps long counters of messages heard and message values received. The simulator also models parallelism by giving each processor a chance to reand values and write new values from and to buesses. These are called "ticks" and occure at aproximately 100Hz. The tick count is reset with each move of a tile. This insures that the "warmup" listening period gets repeated. See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/counts.html

  • channels -- Nodes watch channel activiity and make decisions based on short-term average channel traffic. This page reports the selected transmit channel for emiters and the selected receive channel for receptors. These decisioins are made and kept long afer the channel statistics have been forgottn. However, for comparison, the most and least used channels are reported based on current statistics. See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/channels.html

  • contention -- A receptive node listens for messages on a given channel and may have to wait while unwanted messages are passed on other channels. This page repors average measures for this delay both in "unwanted messages" (a traffic based measure) and "ticks before input" (a time based measure).Finally, the current number of ticks that have passed without input are reported for each node. See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/contention.html

  • history -- Short-term averages and limits are computed from a circular buffer kept for both messages heard (recording channel) and desired messages (recording values). This history is reported for each node. See nodes to establish their positions. See a sample: http:files/TestPoints/history.html

See http://c2.com/doc/TestPoint for more about the imbedded web server that hosts these pages.

 

Last edited November 27, 2002
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