Contents

 Round-Robin

 Function-Queue Scheduling

 Real-Time Operating Systems

 Selecting an Architecture

1
Software Architectures
 When you are designing embedded software, what
architecture will be the most appropriate for a given
system?

2
Decision Factors
 The most important factor
 how much control you need to have over
system response.
 Good response
 Absolute response time requirements
 The speed of your microprocessor
 and the other processing requirements
 Few, loose reqts  simple architecture
 Many, stringent reqts  complex architecture
3
Some Examples
 The control of an air conditioner
 This system can be written with a very simple
software architecture.
 The response time can be within a number of
tens of seconds.
 The major function is to monitor the
temperature readings and turn on and off the
air conditioner.
 A timer may be needed to provide the turn-on and
turn-off time.

4
Some Examples
 The software design of the control of an air
conditioner
 A simple assembly program for a low-end
microprocessor
 Inputs
 Input buttons
 Temperature readings
 Timer readings
 Outputs
 The on-off control of the air conditioner
 The power control
5
Some Examples
 Digital telephone answering machine
 A telephone answering machine with digital
memory, using speech compression.
 The performance and functions
 It should be able to record about 30 minutes of
total voice.
 Voice data are sampled at the standard
telephone rate of 8kHz.
 OGM of up to 10 seconds
 Three basic modes
 Default / play back / OGM editing mode
6
Some Examples
 The class diagram for the answering machine

Microphone

Line-in Record

Controls Outgoing Message

Line-out

Playback Incoming Message

Buttons

Lights
Speaker

7
Some Examples
 The state diagram for the controls activate
behavior

8
Some Examples
 The software design for the answering
machine
 It must respond rapidly to many different
events.
 It has various processing requirements.
 It has different deadlines and different
priorities.
 A more complex architecture

9
4 Basic SW Architectures
 Round-Robin
Increasing
 Round-Robin with Interrupts
Complexity
 Function-Queue Scheduling

 Real-Time Operating System

10
Round-Robin Architecture
 Very simple
 No interrupts
 No shared data
 No latency concerns
 Main loop:
 checks each I/O device in turn
 services any device requests
 E.g.: Digital Multimeter
11
Round-Robin Architecture
 The simplest architecture

Device A

Device B

Device Z

12
An Application
 Digital multimeter
 Measures
 R, I, and V readings
 I/O
 Two probes
 A digital display
 A rotary switch
 Function
 Continuous measurements
 Update display
13
Digital Multimeter
 The possible pseudo-code

14
Digital Multimeter
 Round-robin works well for this system because:
 only 3 I/O devices
 no lengthy processing
 no tight response requirements
 Emergency control
 No such requirements
 Users are unlikely to notice the few fractions of a
second it takes for the microprocessor to get around
the loop
 Adequate because it is a SIMPLE system!

15
Discussion
 Advantages
 Simplicity
 Low development cost
 Short development cycle
 Shortcomings
 This architecture cannot handle complex
problems.

16
Shortcomings
 If any one device needs response in less time
 Two possible improvements for the RR
architecture
 Squeezing the loop
 Carefully arranging the sequence
(A,Z,B,Z,C,Z,D,Z,…)
 If there is any lengthy processing to do
 Every other event is also postponed.
 This architecture is fragile
 A single additional device or requirement may
break everything. 17
Round-Robin with Interrupts
 A little bit more control
 In this architecture,
 ISRs deal with the very urgent needs of the
hardware and set corresponding flags
 the main loop polls the flags and does any follow-
up processing
 ISR can get good response
 All of the processing that you put into the ISR
has a higher priority than the task code

18
A Little Bit More Control
 You can control the priorities among the ISR
as well.
 The software is more event-driven.

Task Code ISR

Shared Variables

19
The Architecture
 Two main parts
Interrupt Service Routines The main loop

20
RR vs. RR-INT
 Priority levels

21
Discussion
 Advantage
 The processing is more efficient.
 Response time is shorter.
 Disadvantage
 All of the shared-data problems can potentially
jump and bite you.

22
An Example of A Simple Bridge
 A device with two ports on it that forwards data traffic
received on the first port to the second and vice versa.

23
Some Assumptions
 Whenever a character is received on one of
the communication links, it causes an
interrupt.
 The Interrupt must be serviced reasonably
quickly.
Interrupt

24
Some Assumptions
 The microprocessor must write characters to
the I/O hardware one at a time.
 The I/O transmitter hardware on that
communication link will be busy, while it
sends the character.
 After transmitting a character, I/O transmitter
will interrupt microprocessor to indicate that it
is ready for the next character.

25
Some Assumptions
 We have routines that will
 read characters from queues,
 write characters to queues, and
 test whether a queue is empty or not
 These routines can be called from ISRs, as
well as, from the task code.
 They deal correctly with the shared-data
problems.
 Encrypt / decrypt one character at a time
26
Possible Code
 Data structures

27
Possible Code
 Interrupt service routines

Interrupts
upon receiving
characters

Interrupts
upon sending
characters
28
 Possible Code
 The main loop

29
Possible Code
 encrypt() and decrypt()

30
Bridge code
 Interrupt routines:
 read characters from hardware
 put them into queues: qDataFromLink[AB]
 Main routine:
 reads data from queues: qDataFromLink[AB]
 encrypts and decrypts data
 write data to queues: qDataToLink[AB]
 I/O Hardware:
 2 vars to keep track: fLink[AB]ReadyToSend
31
Bridge code
 Shared-Data Problem:
 disable / enable interrupts
 Response Time:
 Characters received from hardware by
interrupt routines, thus HIGHER priority
 moving characters among queues, encrypting,
decrypting, sending them out, etc. are of
LOWER priority
 Burst of characters will not overrun system

32
Cordless Bar-Code Scanner
 Get data from laser reading bar codes
 Send data out on the radio
 Only real response requirements
 Service hardware quickly enough
 Thus, round-robin-with-interrupts is sufficient

33
Characteristics of RR-with-Interrupts

 Shortcomings:
 Not as simple as RR
 All task code executes at the same priority

Handle Device A Handle Device B Handle Device C

200 ms 200 ms 200 ms

 C must wait 400 ms

 If C cannot wait that long  system wrong
34
Characteristics of RR-with-Interrupts

 Possible Solutions:
 Move task code for C into interrupt routine
 ISR exec time will increase by 200 ms
 Lower priority devices will have to wait
 Change sequence: A, C, B, C, D, E, C, …
 Response time for C improves
 Response times for other devices may be not
acceptable
 Tuning  Fragile
35
Characteristics of RR-with-Interrupts

 Worst-case response time for task code for

any given device
 RR loop passes task for that device
 Interrupt for that device occurs immediately
after loop passes
 Worst-case response time = Sum of task
code execution times of all other devices

36
Examples of Systems for which
RR-with-Interrupts does not work well
 Laser printer
 Calculating locations for black dots is very
time consuming
 Underground tank-monitoring system
 Calculating gasoline level in tank is very time
consuming
 Processor hog  Task code gets stuck

37
Function Queue Scheduling
Architecture
 In this architecture, the interrupt service
routines add function pointers to a queue of
function pointers.

foo()
*foo() {

38
Function-Queue Scheduling
 Interrupt routines:
 add function pointers to a queue
 Main routine:
 reads pointers from queue
 calls the functions
 Main need not call functions in the order of
occurrence
 A priority scheme can be used for ordering
the function pointers
39
The Framework of FQS
 Three parts

40
Worst-case Execution Time
 Worst wait for highest-priority task code
function = length of longest task code function
 Better than RR-with-Interrupts
 Trade-off
 Response for lower-priority task code
functions may get worse
 Problem
 Starvation: lower-priority task code may never
get executed!

41
Real-Time Operating System
 Interrupt routines
 take care of most urgent operations
 “signal” that there is work for task code to do
 Differences with other architectures:
 Signaling between interrupt routines and task
code is handled by RTOS
 no need of shared variables
 No main loop deciding what to do next, RTOS
decides the scheduling
 Preemption by RTOS scheduler
 RTOS can suspend on task code subroutine to
run another task
42
A Paradigm
 The sample code

43
Worst case execution
 Suppose Task1 has higher priority
 Suppose Task2 is running
 Interrupt occurs and ISR vHandleDeviceA
sets signal X
 Task2 is suspended
Preemption
 Task1 is started
 Worst case execution time for the highest
priority task code subroutine = 0 (+ ISR time)

44
Advantages / Disadvantages of RTOS

 Changes to any task code in the RR or

function-queue scheduling schemes have a
global effect: affects all tasks
 Changes to lower priority task code in RTOS
does not affect response time of higher
priority tasks
 RTOS are widely available, immediate
solutions to your response problems
 Disadvantage: RTOS itself needs some
processing time, throughput is affected
45
Priority Levels
 A comparison

46
Selecting an Architecture
 Select the simplest architecture that will meet
your response requirements
 If your response constraints requires an
RTOS, then buy one and use it because there
are also several debugging tools for it
 You can create hybrids of the architectures.
 RTOS / RR
 main task code can poll slow hardware devices
that do not need fast response
 Use interrupts for faster hardware
47
 Characteristics of Architectures

Round-robin

Round-robin with
Interrupts

Function-queue
scheduling

Real-time
operating system
48