A Linux utility for evaluating PC hardware capability to run the RMP EtherCAT Motion Controller.
This tool helps determine if your PC hardware meets the latency requirements for running the RMP EtherCAT Motion Controller. RMP requires consistent real-time performance with specific latency thresholds that depend on your sample rate (e.g., 1000Hz requires <125µs latency).
Use this utility during the PC hardware evaluation phase to:
- Test cyclic timing performance of your isolated CPU
- Evaluate network interface card (NIC) performance with hardware timestamps
- Identify timing variability before deploying RMP
Pre-built packages are available to download for amd64 and arm64 from the GitHub Releases page.
Debian/Ubuntu Installation:
# Install
sudo dpkg -i rmp-eval_*.debImportant: This tool must be run as root to access raw sockets and set real-time thread priorities. A PREEMPT_RT kernel is required for RMP.
Basic cyclic test (no NIC):
sudo rmp-evalNIC test with EtherCAT drive (replace enp2s0 with your NIC name):
sudo rmp-eval --nic enp2s0Note: The NIC must have an EtherCAT drive connected for this test.
Press Ctrl+C to stop the test and view final results.
sudo ./rmp-eval --nic enp2s0
CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-13100TE (4 logical, 4 physical)
Kernel: Linux 6.12.43+deb13-rt-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_RT Debian 6.12.43-1 (2025-08-27) x86_64
System Checks
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PREEMPT_RT active ✔️ /sys/kernel/realtime=1
Swap disabled ✔️ /proc/swaps empty
Timer Migration disabled ✔️ timer_migration=0
RT throttling disabled ✔️ sched_rt_runtime_us=-1
Clocksource stable ✔️ tsc
Core 3 Checks
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RT core isolated ✔️ isolated list: 3
nohz_full on RT core ✔️ nohz_full list: 3
rcu_nocbs includes RT core ✔️ 3
CPU governor = performance ✔️ governor=performance
CPU current frequency ❌ cur=800000 kHz, min=800000 kHz, max=4100000 kHz
irqaffinity excludes RT core ✔️ 0,1
No unrelated IRQs on RT core ✔️ clean
SMT sibling isolated/disabled ✔️ no sibling
Deep C-states capped ✔️ intel_idle.max_cstate=0
Turbo/boost disabled ❌ intel_pstate/no_turbo=0
NIC enp2s0 Checks
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NIC interface present ✔️ exists
NIC link is UP ✔️ operstate=up
NIC is quiet ❌ v4=0, v6=1, def4=no, def6=no
NIC IRQs pinned to RT core ✔️ all pinned to CPU3
RPS disabled on NIC ✔️ all zero masks
Target period: 1000 us
| | | Great | Good | Poor | Bad | Pathetic | Max Latency |
| Label | Count | < 125us | < 250us | < 500us | < 1000us | >= 1000us | us | index |
|----------+-------+---------+---------+---------+----------+-----------+------+-------+
| Sender | 62367 | 62367 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 161 |
| Receiver | 62367 | 62367 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 61567 |
Duration: 00:01:02.445
Sender max period: 1001µs at index 161 which is Great.
Receiver max period: 1010µs at index 61567 which is Great.Columns:
- Label: Sender or Receiver thread (or Cyclic if no NIC)
- Count: Total observations (cycles)
- < 125us, < 250us, < 500us, < 1000us, >= 1000us: Latency deviation buckets
- Colored (green → red) based on severity
- Calculated as deviation from target period
- Max us: Worst-case latency deviation in microseconds (line 208: max - target)
- Max Index: Which iteration had the worst case
./rmp-eval --help
Options:
--nic, -n Network interface card name
--iterations, -i Number of iterations
--send-sleep, -s Send sleep duration in microseconds
--send-priority, -sp Send thread priority
--receive-priority, -rp Receive thread priority
--send-cpu, -sc CPU core to use for the sender thread
--receive-cpu, -rc CPU core to use for the receiver thread
--verbose, -v Enable verbose output
--no-config, -nc Skip system configuration checks
--bucket-width, -b Bucket width in microseconds for counting occurrences.
--help, -h Show this help message
--version Show version informationPrerequisites:
- CMake 3.15 or later
- GCC 12 or later
- C++20 support
Build steps:
# Configure
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
-DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-12 \
-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-12
# Build
cmake --build build
# Run
sudo ./build/rmp-evalThis project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.