Technical data

ASTi ACE Studio Components Reference Guide Rev. M DOC-01-TELAS-CRG-4
Copyright © 2014 Advanced Simulation Technology inc. 171
14.0. Host Control
Before adding the HostIn and HostOut components, you must first add a host
model. This is required in order to create the host I/O packets. Inside the host
model, select to add either a HostIn or HostOut controller and then add the host I/O
components also known as packets.
The most common question asked regarding host control is how to debug it and
find out if it is working properly. In order to debug the host control, the user must
figure out if packets are coming in off the network from the host.
To determine packet activity, there are two items to pay close attention to in the
host interface. The first is ‘Live Capture’ which takes a screen capture of the packet
activity coming in from the host and the second is the ‘Controller’ which displays
the packet statistics.
In the ‘Controller,’ also called the ACE HostIn Viewer, the Fail Count column will
always show data if the host is working, the numbers will continue to increment in
a loop if it is working properly. The ‘Total Packets Received’ number will
increment over time if the host control is working properly.
The TestIn and TestOut components are for ASTi internal testing, contact ASTi for
more information.
14.1. HostIn
Summary: The Host Input component serves as a user interface wrapper for
control data fields extracted from external sources (including host Ethernet control
UDP packets and state machine cells), providing a means to apply incoming control
data to other components in the model. This describes the Host Input as used with
the host Ethernet. A future revision of the Host Input component may include an
interface to state machine cells.
Users create and modify Host Input components using the ACE IO Packet Editor.
With this tool users specify the source of the data packet by UDP port, then
extracted individual Host Input components are connected to other model
components, serving as control variables.
Description: The IO Packet Editor provides a means to functionally disassemble a
host UDP packet into individual fields. The Host Input component is the composite
collection of individual data fields in a specific packet. The individual fields within
the Host Input (data sources) are used as control variables by other model
components (data sinks).
The Host Input component is analogous to the various Control objects in Model
Builder. The fundamental difference between the Host Input component and (MB)
control object is: whereas MB included a separate control object or each data type,
the Host Input component encompasses all fields within a host packet.
Additionally, the Host Input accommodates all available data types.
The process for creating and using Host Inputs follows:
1. Using the IO Packet Editor, specify the UDP port of the host packet and the
most-least significant data order (big or little endian).
2. To create a field within a Host Input component, specify the parameters defin-
ing the data field: offset byte location within the packet (or in the case of a
boolean field, offset byte and bit), the data type and the initial value for the
field.
Once a Host Input field (data source) has been created, it can be linked to a variable
(data sink) inside another component. The action of making a link is done on the
sink side of the link. The link is visible from the source side (the Host Input “Used
By” shows the sink component name) and from the sink side (the sink component
“From” shows the Host Input field name).
Each field in the Host Component is defined by:
A. Name – The Name field is used as a descriptor for the component.