REAL TIME OPERATING SYSTEMS
Lesson-11:
Basic Design using an Real Time
Operating System
Chapter-10 L11: "Embedded Systems - Architecture, Programming and
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1. Basic Design
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RTOS
An embedded system with a single CPU can
run only one process at an instance.
The process at any instance either may be
an ISR or kernel function or task
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RTOS
Provides running the user threads in kernel
space so that they execute fast.
Provides effective handling of the ISRs,
device drivers, ISTs, tasks or threads
Disabling and enabling of interrupts in user
mode critical section code
Provides memory allocation and de-
allocation functions in blocks and in a fixed
blocks of memory
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RTOS
Provides for effectively scheduling and
running and blocking of the tasks in cases
of number of many tasks
I/O Management with devices, files,
mailboxes, pipes and sockets becomes
simple using an RTOS
provides for the uses of Semaphore (s) by
the tasks or for the shared resources
(cCritical sections) in a task or OS functions
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RTOS
Effective management of the multiple
states of the CPU and, internal and
external physical or virtual devices
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1. Hard Real Time Design Considerations
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Hard real time
Hard real time means strict about adherence
to each task deadline. When an event
occurs, it should be serviced within the
predictable time at all times in a given hard
real time system.
The preemption period for the hard real
time task in worst case should be very small
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Hard real time
A hard RT RTOS is one, which has
predictable performance with no deadline
miss, even in case of sporadic tasks (sudden
bursts of occurrence of events requiring
attention).
Automobile engine control system and anti
lock brake are the examples of hard real
time systems
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Hard real time system design
Disabling of all other interrupts of lower priority
when running the hard real time tasks
Preemption of higher priority task by lower
priority tasks
Some critical code in assembly to meet the real
time constraint (deadline) fast
Task running in kernel space, [This saves the
time required to first check whether access is
outside the memory space allocated to the kernel
functions.]
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Hard real time system design
Provision of asynchronous IOs
Provision of locks or spin locks
Predictions of interrupt latencies and
context switching latencies of the tasks
Predictability is achieved by writing all
functions which execute always take the
same predefined time intervals in case of
varying rates of occurrences of the events.
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Hard real time system design
Response in all the time slots for the given
events in the system and thus providing
the guaranteed task deadlines even in case
of sporadic and aperiodic tasks.
Sporadic tasks means tasks executed on
the sudden-bursts of the corresponding
events at high rates, and
Aperiodic tasks mean task having no
definite period of event occurrence.
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Hard real time system design
Response in all the time slots for the given
events in the system and thus providing
the guaranteed task deadlines even in case
of sporadic and aperiodic tasks.
Sporadic tasks means tasks executed on
the sudden-bursts of the corresponding
events at high rates, and
Aperiodic tasks mean task having no
definite period of event occurrence.
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Example of hard real time system
video transmission, each picture frame and
audio must be transferred at fixed rate
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2. Soft Real Time Design Considerations
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Soft real time system
One in which deadlines are mostly met.
Soft real time means that only the
precedence and sequence for the task-
operations are defined, interrupt latencies
and context switching latencies are small
but there can be few deviations between
expected latencies of the tasks and observed
time constraints and a few deadline misses
are accepted
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Soft real time task
The preemption period for the soft real time
task in worst case may be about a few ms.
Mobile phone, digital cameras and orchestra
playing robots are examples of soft real
time systems.
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3. Real Time Operating System based
System design Principles
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Design with using Interrupt Service
Threads or Interrupt Service tasks
Certain RTOSes, for servicing the
interrupts, there are two levels, (i) fast level
ISRs and (ii) slow level ISTs, the priorities
are first for the ISRs, then for the ISTs and
then the task
Certain RTOSes three levels
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Design with using Interrupt Service
Threads
ISRs post the messages for the ISTs and
do the detailed computations.
If RTOS is providing for only one level,
then use the tasks as interrupt service
threads
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Design Each Task with an infinite loop
Each task has a while loop which never
terminates.
A task waits for an IPC or signal to start.
The task, which gets the signal or takes the
IPC for which it is waiting, runs from the
point where it was blocked or preempted.
In preemptive scheduler, the high priority
task can be delayed for some period to let
the low priority task execute
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Design in the form of tasks for the Better
and Predictable Response Time Control
provide the control over the response time
of the different tasks.
The different tasks are assigned different
priorities and those tasks which system
needs to execute with faster response are
separated out.
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Response Time Control
For example, in mobile phone device there
is need for faster response to the phone call
receiving task then the user key input.
In digital camera, the task for recording the
image needs faster response than the task
for down loading the image on computer
through USB port
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Design in the form of tasks Modular Design
System of multiple tasks makes the design
modular.
The tasks provide modular design
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Design in the form of tasks for Data
Encapsulation
System of multiple tasks encapsulates the
code and data of one task from the other by
use of global variables in critical sections
getting exclusive access by mutex
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Design with taking care of the time spent in
the system calls
expected time in general depends on the
specific target processor of the embedded
system and the memory access times.
Some IPCs takes longer than the other
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Design with Limited number of tasks
Limit the number of tasks and select the
appropriate number of tasks to increase
the response time to the tasks, better
control over shared resource and reduced
memory requirement for stacks
The tasks, which share the data with
number of tasks, can be designed as one
single task.
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Use appropriate precedence assignment
strategy and Use Preemption
Use appropriate precedence assignment
strategy and Use Preemption in place of
Time Slicing
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Avoid Task Deletion
Create tasks at start-up only and avoid
creating and then deleting tasks later at the
later times.
Deleting only advantage─ availability of
additional memory space
Chapter-10 L11: "Embedded Systems - Architecture, Programming and
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Use CPU idle CPU time for internal
functions
Read the internal queue.
Manage the memory.
Search for a free block of memory.
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Design with Memory Allocation and De-
Allocation By the Task
If memory allocation and de-allocation are done
by the task then the number of functions required
as the RTOS functions is reduced.
This reduces the interrupt-latency periods. As
execution of these functions takes significant time
by the RTOS whenever the RTOS preempts a
task.
Further, if fixed sized memory blocks are
allocated, then the predictability of time taken in
memory allocation is there
Chapter-10 L11: "Embedded Systems - Architecture, Programming and
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
Design with taking care of the Shared
Resource or Data among the Tasks
The ISR coding should be as like a reentrant
function or should take care of problems
from the shared resources or data such as
buffer or global variables
if possible, instead of disabling the
interrupts only the task-switching flag
changes should only be prevented. [It is by
using the semaphore.]
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Design with limited RTOS functions
Use an RTOS, which can be configured.
RTOS provides during execution of the
codes enabling the limited RTOS functions.
For example, if queue and pipe functions
are not used during execution, then disable
these during run
Scalable RTOS
Hierarchical RTOS
Chapter-10 L11: "Embedded Systems - Architecture, Programming and
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Use an RTOS, which provides for creation
of scalable code
Only the needed functions include in the
executable files, and those functions of
kernel and RTOS not needed do not include
in the executable files
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Use an RTOS, which is hierarchical
The needed functions extended and
interfaced with the functionalities
Configured with specific processor and
devices
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Encapsulation Using the Semaphores
Semaphores, queues, and messages should
not be not globally shared variables, and let
each should one be shared between a set of
tasks only and encapsulated from the rest
A semaphore encapsulates the data during a
critical section or encapsulates a buffer
from reading task or writing into the buffer
by multiple tasks concurrently
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Encapsulation Using Queues
A queue can be used to encapsulate the messages
to a task at an instance from the multiple tasks.
Assume that a display task is posted a menu for
display on a touch screen in a PDA
Multiple tasks can post the messages into the
queue for display.
When one task is posting the messages and these
messages are displayed, another task should be
blocked from posting the messages.
We can write a task, which takes the input
messages from other tasks and posts these
messages to the display task only after querying
whether the queue is empty
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Summary
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We learnt
• There are certain design principles observed
when using the RTOS
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End of Lesson 12 of Chapter 8
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
Summary
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
We learnt
• Soft real time systems can accept few
deadline misses and
• Hard real time systems adhere to the
predicted latencies, deadlines and time
constraints of the processes
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
End of Lesson 13 of Chapter 8
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
Summary
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
We learnt
• RTOS is an OS for effective real time
scheduling of the concurrent processes
• User priority allocations
• Preemptive scheduling
• Fixed memory blocks allocation and de-
allocation
• IPCs
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Design" , Raj Kamal, Publs.: McGraw-Hill Education
End of Lesson 11 of Chapter 10
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