Parallel Tasks and Scheduling
When the complexity of the system increases and the software has to manage multiple peripherals and events at the same time, it is more convenient to rely on an operating system to coordinate and synchronize all the different operations. Separating the application logic into different threads offers a few important architectural advantages. Each component performs the designed operation within its running unit, and it may release the CPU while it is suspended, or waiting for input or a timeout event.
In this chapter, the mechanisms used to implement a multithreading embedded operating system will be covered. This will be done through the development of a minimalistic operating system tailored to the reference platform, and written step by step from scratch, providing a working scheduler to run multiple tasks in parallel.
The scheduler’s internals are mostly implemented within system service calls, and its design impacts the system’s...
