Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] constant noutput_items

[Tom Rondeau]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Michael Dickens <address@hidden> wrote:
> As Martin wrote, the shortest answer is: no, or, well, not really or not 
> always.  Under some circumstances this could be made work at least sometimes, 
> but I don't think you can guarantee it all of the time.  For example, many of 
> the OFDM blocks always process exactly 1 packet's or FFT's worth of data, and 
> hence have a guaranteed -actual- number of consumed and generated items; the 
> amount provided and requested by the scheduler may be different that the 
> actuals (and, I think, generally is).  IIRC, the technique used by these 
> blocks is to set the I/O signatures, output multiple, and ::forecast such 
> that the number of I/O items is a multiple of what is required (the packet or 
> FFT length).  In my (very limited) testing, the OFDM blocks work for their 
> defaults and sometimes other values; but they're not exactly robust -- some 
> values just don't work (and, no, I cannot given an example off the top of my 
> head; just go and play with the OFDM benchmarks).  Good luck! - MLD
>


Another method to work with is the ability to set the maximum number
of items a block is allowed to process. You pass this in as a
max_noutput_items to a top_block's run() or start() methods. This
won't always have the same number, just sets the max. But we do not
implement a static scheduler like you're looking for.

If you have a block that absolutely requires a certain number of items
to process, then you can use the forecast method to request a
particular minimum number of items. You may receive more than this,
but not less in this case. If you receive more, you only have to
process the number you want and return that amount; the scheduler will
use that to keep track of what data you have and have not handled.

This way of working can be useful in some cases, like the OFDM symbol
handling code. Most of the time, we try to let the scheduler provide
the data and we write the blocks to handle all or as much as possible
but have data members that keep state between calls to work.

Tom


> On Mar 28, 2012, at 5:43 AM, Martin Braun wrote:
>
>> Short answer: no. Long answer: It depends. If you're depending on the input
>> items. For a source, or for a block independent on the input data,
>> there's ways to do this.
>> Also, you can fix the output item size. Perhaps that'll do what you
>> want (i.e. you can output vectors of fixed length).
>
>> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 08:58:37AM +0100, s k wrote:
>>> I want to ask that can we immobilize the noutput_items value to a constant
>>> value when we write a block. So we can give always the same amount of 
>>> output.
>
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