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Increase "Setting memory size"

ksilovich 8 years ago in IQANdesign updated 8 years ago 8

Is there any way to increase the size of the memory settings in an MD4. I am using quite a few of the "Memorizing Channels" and 29kb is not enough room for what I am trying to do. Or is there a way to save a value to a log and retrieve that value in the code?

No, the settings memory is a 32 kB FRAM, there is no way to increase this without a hardware change.

Out of curiosity, how many Memorizing channels do you use?

I was trying to save 180 unique jobs that require 20 memorizing channels each. So that would be 3600 channels. With about 100 other stored channels.

I just realized you also posted about the adjustable text parameters, that is probably where most of the settings memory is used up.

The application statistics does not show the proportions of where the settings memory is used up, but it is good to uderstand how much each TP adds. By default, a TP has a lenght of 15 bytes, which allows you to enter texts with 15 characters for English. For other languages with other charactes, each character may take up more than one byte, up to 4.


A suggestion to reduce memory usage from the TP channels is to minimize the Max length of your parameters.

I already reduced it down to 8 bytes to try and save memory space. It helped some, but still isn't enough. For right now I will just reduce the number of jobs I can store. I think I am able to get about 75 before I run our of memory.

Wow, 3600 MEM channels is a lot.

The MEM channel stores 4 bytes, so with 3600 channels, that is about 14 kB, plus memory needed for the checksums.

The check sums must be about the same size as the actual MEM channels. Because this is what I get with 3600 channels. I have to reduce it down to about 2200 before its under the (Max. 29KB)

The old MD3 had 32k, just want sure if the MD4 had more, and it was software limited currently. For now I will just reduce how much I am storing.


The 32 kB for the settings memory is a physical limitation. The MD4 has got huge amounts of the much slower flash memory, but only the event logs can make use of that larger memory.


Sorry, my response that the MEM channel taking up 4 bytes + checksum was a bit too quick, I did not think of the component ID that links it to a specific channel.

Each MEM channel takes up 12 bytes of the settings memory.


In version 4.00 (due to be released next week), there is a new array memory channel, and that will make it possible to reduce the channel count, and that should make the storage more efficient.

+1

Awesome. I will just hold off on that part of the program and give the Array Channel a try.
Thank you for all the help and suggestions.