Hello all I am testing Ethernet connectivity on a STM32F746G discovery board. To maintain a defined sampling rate, I am polling a timer object. This usually takes between 1 and 2 microseconds. However, having an unconnected global instance of 'EthernetInterface', this may take up to 20 us. It looks like my program gets interrupted. May the EthernetInterface instance constantly generate interrupts, which take up to 20 us? What could be the reason for this behavior? Any help appreciated Simon In my follow-up post below you find a minimum working example, which clearly demonstrates the effect observed. Edit: simpler example

#include "mbed.h"
#include "EthernetInterface.h"

Serial              pc(SERIAL_TX, SERIAL_RX);   // serial for printf
//EthernetInterface   ethIf;                      // <= INFLUENCES TIMING

int main() 
{
    uint32_t        durationMaxUs    = 0;          // statistics
         
    Timer timer;    // a timer
    timer.start();  // start it
    
    uint32_t timeStampLastUs = timer.read_us(); // sampling timestamp

    for (int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i)
    {
        const uint32_t timeStampNowUs   = timer.read_us();
        const uint32_t durationUs       = timeStampNowUs - timeStampLast;

        timeStampLastUs   = timeStampNowUs;
        durationMaxUs     = std::max(durationMaxUs, durationUs);    
    }
    pc.printf("Duration max: %u us\n", durationMaxUs); // either 3 or 20 ?!
}

I boiled it down to the following lines of code: <<code title=Minimum example>> #include "mbed.h" #include "EthernetInterface.h" Serial pc(SERIAL_TX, SERIAL_RX); // serial for printf //EthernetInterface ethIf; // <= INFLUENCES TIMING int main() { uint32_t durationMaxUs = 0; // statistics Timer timer; // a timer timer.start(); // start it uint32_t timeStampLastUs = timer.read_us(); // sampling timestamp for (int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i) { const uint32_t timeStampNowUs = timer.read_us(); const uint32_t durationUs = timeStampNowUs - timeStampLast; timeStampLastUs = timeStampNowUs; durationMaxUs = std::max(durationMaxUs, durationUs); } pc.printf("Duration max: %u us\n", durationMaxUs); // either 3 or 20 ?! } <</code>> Having no Ethernet instance, the maximum is 3 us, having one it is around 20 us. What is going on here?