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INCA V7.4 Performance TipsAndTricks EN
INCA V7.4 Performance TipsAndTricks EN
Contents
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 4
Figures ....................................................................................................................... 19
Tables ......................................................................................................................... 20
Index........................................................................................................................... 22
1 Introduction
INCA supports engineers in the automotive industry to perform their measurement,
calibration, validation and diagnostic tasks. These tasks come by default with high
performance requirements for a PC system. For example, huge description files
like ASAP2 (ASAM MCD-2 MC) are used, a large amount of measurement data
needs to be recorded and analysed, and a large amount of signals have to be
monitored and visualized. During the development of INCA these performance
requirements are taken into account, so that INCA can address the daily tasks of a
calibration engineer on a standard Windows© computer.
However, there are other environmental effects, which cannot be influenced by the
design and the development of INCA, but have impact on INCA’s performance.
Those are:
• The PC’s hardware configuration on which INCA is running
• The software environment, under which INCA is running, i.e. the operating
system and other software applications running in parallel to INCA
• The individual usage and configuration of INCA by the user
The goal of this document is to provide some best practices and tips & tricks on
how to deal with these environmental effects to get the best possible performance
when operating INCA.
i NOTE
As the given tips & tricks strongly depend on the individual used PC hardware
and SW environment, they can only be seen as general hints. Therefore,
evaluate each hint under the actual given environment of the user. There might
be hints, which bring performance improvements under the used environment
and others that do not.
2 PC Hardware Configuration
As with any software product, INCA’s performance depends strongly on the PC
hardware used. This chapter provides you with recommendations which PC
Hardware to choose when operating INCA.
For current system requirements, refer to the Installation Guide and the Release
Notes of your INCA version.
i NOTE
The Oscilloscope released in INCA V7.1 requires Graphic Boards supporting
DirectX 9.29 or higher and equipped with sufficient RAM (1GB recommended)
on board.
i NOTE
The performance of a PC system cannot be determined from the performance of
each individual hardware component, but also depends on their smooth
interaction.
Therefore, before defining a standard PC configuration for a department or a
company ETAS recommends evaluating the performance of such a PC
1Example of a medium-sized project and experiment: A project with ~15.000 variables, 2 ECU
devices and an experiment with ~10 layers and ~ 500 selected variables.
2.2.1 Processor
The CPU is the calculation engine of your PC and therefore has high impact on the
performance of INCA. However, the price/performance quotient for CPUs is not
linear, which leads to the fact that choosing cutting-edge CPU models provides
only a minor performance improvement at a significant higher price compared to
state of the art CPUs.
i NOTE
The best practice is to choose the second latest CPU core generation, which
typically provides a good performance at a reasonable price.
i NOTE
Mobile CPUs are only recommended if the user frequently runs his notebook on
battery mode for long hours. For use in vehicles, 12V DC/AC adapters should be
considered as an alternative.
i NOTE
When selecting a new PC, compare the HDD access times of different offers.
Changing the HDD of an existing PC just for performance reasons makes less
sense, unless you need more storage capacity anyway.
i NOTE
If you use INCA, you can almost use any state-of-the-art graphic board.
ETAS recommends a graphic board with a resolution of at least 1280x1024
pixel, a 16 or 32bit color depth and at least DirectX 7 support.
Configuration 1 is used as reference (i.e. 100%, explicitly shown only in the last
line). The percentages given for Configuration 2 for the different use cases indicate
the relation to Configuration 1. Any value below 100% means that Config.2 is faster
than Config.1; the lower the percentage, the better the performance in relation to
Config.1.
3 Software Environment
i NOTE
For maximum performance connect your PC to a power supply or configure the
Windows Energy Saving Options in a way that maximum performance is granted
even under battery mode.
i NOTE
Presentation Mode to avoid that the PC goes to standby / hibernate.
Press [Windows] + [X] first and then select the Mobility Center. Then click on
"Turn on" in Presentation Settings. This changes the status of the Presentation
Settings to "Presenting".
i NOTE
In case of unexpected low system performance, ETAS recommends that you
investigate the impact of the hard disk encryption under the PC hardware /BIOS
configuration in use. If it turns out that the encryption is the root cause, use a
hard disk password instead of hard disk encryption. However, as this could lead
to less data security, discuss such step with your company’s IT department.
i NOTE
To optimize the INCA performance, use drives that are connected to the INCA
PC with high bandwidth and low latency.
i NOTE
In case of a performance decrease due to running applications in parallel to
INCA you have the following options:
Reduce the number of applications running in parallel.
Should this not be possible you should consider increasing the overall system
performance by upgrading the PC hardware configuration or single hardware
components (see chapter Individual PC Hardware Components on page 5).
i NOTE
To avoid negative impact on the performance of INCA do the following:
Perform manual and scheduled scans at times when you are not using INCA
(e.g. during lunch break)
Exclude the file paths of INCA from the online scans:
C:\Program Files\ETAS *
C:\ETAS *
D:\ETASData *
* The exact path may vary on your PC. You can configure during installation.
i NOTE
It is not sufficient to disable the multimedia service.
i NOTE
No user should be signed in to e.g. Skype, Jitsi, Zoom, or any other instant
messaging service.
i NOTE
Make sure that the INCA database is located on the local hard disk.
Copy project files that are frequently accessed by INCA to the local hard disk.
If necessary, configuration management tools (e.g. SubVersion) can help to
keep the original project files on the network share and local copies on the
local hard disk consistent.
i NOTE
Avoid COMPU_METHODS of the type "FORM" in your ASAP2 files. They can
often be replaced by the type RAT_FUNCTION.
i NOTE
Update and correct the A2L description file that provokes the errors and
warnings.
i NOTE
Use the INCA user option “Experiment / Measure / General / Cycle time for
measure data polling [ms]” to tune the measurement data transmission from
INCA to the Automation System. For maximum bandwidth use 500ms for
minimum latency use 20ms.
i NOTE
You can toggle between on-line and off-line access to the Experiment
Environment by clicking on the experiment icon in the toolbar of the INCA
Database Manager:
Experiments will be opened in on-line mode
Experiments will be opened in off-line mode
Even if the Experiment Environment is open in off-line mode, you can still switch
explicitly to the on-line mode by pressing <F3> (initialize hardware).
i NOTE
When working with huge experiments you can reduce the required Windows
resources (memory, GDI resources) by distributing layers with a high number of
elements to several smaller layers.
i NOTE
Use the INCA user options below “Experiment / Measure” and “Experiment /
Calibration” to tune the default settings of Experiment Instruments to your
personal preferences.
You can increase the number of measurement and calibration variables which can
be displayed in an experiment by using the instrument types "Measurement Table"
and "Calibration Table" instead of "Measurement Windows" and "Calibration
Windows", as the tables require less GDI objects than the classic windows.
i NOTE
It is possible to increase the maximum number of GDI objects that a single
application can use by editing the registry of the operating system. However, this
can lead to unexpected system crashes when the overall number of GDI objects
for all applications is used up.
Therefore, ETAS does not recommend increasing the maximum number of GDI
objects in the registry of the operating system.
i NOTE
For more details about the configuration of the auto borrow mechanism, refer to
the ETAS License Manager Online Help.
5 Contact Information
ETAS Headquarters
ETAS GmbH
Borsigstraße 24 Phone: +49 711 3423-0
70469 Stuttgart Fax: +49 711 3423-2106
Germany Internet: www.etas.com
Figures
Fig. 2-1 Performance comparison SSD / HDD ...................................................................... 7
Fig. 2-2 Performance comparison of different PC configurations .......................................... 8
Tables
Tab. 2-1 Two different PC configurations with results ............................................................ 8
AuSy
Automation System
CPU
Central Processing Unit of a PC, shortly processor.
GDI
Graphical Device Interface
GUI
Graphical User Interface
HDD
Hard Disk Device
OS
Operating System. In this document only Windows© operating systems are
considered.
SSD
Solid State Disk
Index
A I
Applications Running in Parallel 11 INCA System Requirements 5
ASAM MCD 2MC 14
ASAP2 14
L
ASAP3 15
Latency 15
B Licences File 17
Bandwidth 15
M
BorrowExpiryInterval 17
Main Storage 6
C Measurement Table 17
Measurement Windows 17
Calibration Table 17 Mobile CPU 6
Calibration Windows 17 Multi-core CPU 6
COMPU_METHOD 14
CPU 6
O
D Off-line Mode 15
Operating System 10
Dual Core CPU 6
P
E
PC Hardware Components 5, 9
Energy Saving Mode 10 PC Hardware Configuration 5
ETAS 18 Processor 6
ExecuteBorrowAutomaticExtensionInterval
17
R
G RAM 6
GDI objects 16
S
Graphic Board 7, 8
Software Environment 10
H Solid State Disk 6
SSD 7
Hard Disk 6 System Requirements 5
Hard Disk Data Encryption 11
HDD 6
V
Virus Scanner 12, 13