What is a good tool for graphing sub-millisecond timelines?

Question

I'm trying to produce a timeline for my real-time embedded code. I need to show all the interrupts, what triggers them, when they are serviced, how long they execute, etc. I have done the profiling and have the raw data, now I need a way to show the timeline graphically, to scale.

I've been searching for a good tool, but haven't come up with anything great yet. Everything that I've found works on timelines of days and years. I want a graph showing a single 2-millisecond cycle. For now I'm using Visio, but I keep thinking there must be something easier. Any ideas?

I'm hoping to produce something like this: .
Unfortunately, mine is more complicated, but that's the general idea.

Answer 1

So at that scale your abscissas is going to be a pure number (e.g. microseconds from the start time, or some such). Graphing tools to graph things like this are commonplace.

I'd suggest something like gnuplot, but I suspect there's more to the problem than is evident in your summary.

Ah, the picture makes it all much clearer. If gnuplot doesn't do it for you, I'll offer another suggestion (or at least tell you what I'd do): write it from scratch.

Specifically, I'd probably throw together something in a scripting language (ruby, python, whatever) to read the data and generate pic code that looked the way I wanted. If you decide to go that route, here's an overview of pic basics and also the manual. If you dig in you should have something plausible in an hour and within a week you'll have something that suits you better than any off the shelf GUI app ever will.

Answer 2

I feel for you. In my system, we have a 1.1 millisecond cycle and 13 measurement points over 4 different components. I suspect you're facing similar complexity.

Bad news is there are no off-the-shelf solutions I'm aware of. However MarkusQ is correct stating that you can use (abuse?) standard graphing packages to accomplish what you need. But you will need to invest some time to customize the output to your liking.

We make extensive use of the R Project driven by Python code via RPy R/Python bridge to generate our plots. This setup works very well for us and has enabled us to automate the process. Python is used to acquire and cleanse the data from the real-time system and R does the drawing.

R's graphics customization support is extensive allowing you to control all aspects of the plot, locations, sizes, etc. It can be intimidating at first, but there is an excellent book R Graphics that helps with a companion website that contains all of the book's examples.

Whatever you choose, make sure there's the ability to automate via scripting. The amount of data real-time systems generate is too much to deal with without flexible tools.

Answer 3

gtkwave could be used