UNIT-IV

REAL-TIME OPERATING
SYSTEMS BASED
EMBEDDED SYSTEM
DESIGN

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 CONTENTS
4.1. Operating systems basics

4.2. Types of operating systems

4.3. Task, process and threads

4.4. Multiprocessing and multitasking

4.5. Task scheduling

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 4.1. Operating systems basics
 The operating system acts as a bridge
between the user applications/tasks and
underlying the system resources through a set of
system functionalities and services.
 The OS manages the system resources and
makes them available to the user
applications/tasks on a need basis.
 A normal computing system is a collection of
different I/O subsystems, working and storage
memory.
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The primary functions of an operating system is

a) Make the system convenient to use

b) Organise and manage the system

resources efficiently and correctly.

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OS components or Architecture
USER APPLICATIONS

MEMORY MANAGEMENT

PROCESS MANAGEMENT

TIME MANAGEMENT

FILE SYSTEM MANAGEMENT

I/O SYSTEM MANAGEMENT

HARDWAREveera
 KERNEL
• Kernel is the core of the operating system and
is responsible for managing the system
resources and the communication among the
hardware and other system services
• Kernel acts as a abstraction layer between
system resources and user applications
• Kernel contains a set of system libraries and
services.

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For a GPOS, the kernel contain different services
for handling the following

 Process management
 Memory (primary and
secondary)management
 File system management
 I/O system(Device) management
 Protection systems
 Interrupt handler
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Process management(PM):
It deals with managing the process/tasks
PM includes setting up the memory space for
the process, loading the process’s code into
the memory, allocating system resources,
scheduling and the managing the execution of
the process, setting up and managing the
process control block(PCB), IPC and
synchronisation, Process termination/
detection etc.

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Primary memory management:
 The term primary refers to the volatile
memory (RAM) where processes are loaded
and variables and shared data associated with
each process are stored.
The memory management unit(MMU) of the
kernel is responsible for
a) Keeping track of which part of the memory
area is currently used by which process
b) Allocating and de-allocating memory space
on a need base(Dynamic memory Allocation)

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File system management:

file is a collection of related information

A file could be a program, text files, image

files, word documents,audio/video fiels etc.

The file operation is a useful service provided

by the OS

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The file system management service of kernel is
responsible for
The creation, deletion and alteration of files
Creation, deletion and alteration of directories
Saving of files in the secondary storage
memory
Providing automatic allocation of file space
based on the amount of free space available.
Providing a flexible naming convention for the
files
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I/O system management:
• Kernel is responsible for routing the I/O
request coming from different user
applications to the appropriate I/O devices of
the system.
• In a well-structured OS, the direct accessing of
I/O devices are not allowed and the access to
them are provided through a set of
Application Programming Interfaces(API)
exposed by the kernel

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The kernel maintains a list of all the I/O
devices of the system.

The service ‘device manager’ of the kernel is

responsible for handling all I/O device related
operations

The kernel talks to the I/O device through a

set of low-level system calls, which are
implemented in a service, called device drivers
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Secondary storage management:
It deals with managing the secondary storage
memory devices, if any, connected to the
system.
Secondary memory is used as backup medium
for programs and data since main memory is
volatile.
In most of the systems, the secondary storage
is kept in disks(hard disk).

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The secondary storage management service of
kernel deals with

Disk storage allocation

Disk scheduling

Free disk space management

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 Kernel space and user space
Applications/services

User applications kernel application

User space kernel space

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 Kernel types
Based on kernel design, kernels can be classified
into

A) monolithic kernel

B) microkernel

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 Monolithic Kernel
In Monolithic kernel architecture, all kernel
services run in the kernel space.
Here all kernel modules run within the same
memory space under a single kernel thread
the major drawback of monolithic kernel is
that any error or failure in any one of the
kernel modules leads to the crashing of the
entire kernel application.
Ex: LINUX, SOLARIS,MS-DOS
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 APPLICATIONS

MONOLITHIC KERNEL WITH ALL

OPERATING SYSTEM SERVICES
RUNNING IN KERNEL SPACE

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 MICROKERNEL
 the microkernel design incorporates only the
essential set of operating system services into the
kernel.
 The rest of the operating system services are
implemented in programs known as ‘servers’
which runs in user space.
 Memory management, process management,
timer systems and interrupt handlers are the
essential services. Which forms the part of
microkernel.
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servers(kernel services
running in the user Applications
space)

Microkernel with essential

services like memory
management, process
management, timer system
etc.

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 4.2. Types operating systems

Operating systems are classified into different

types

i) General purpose operating systems

ii) Real-time operating systems

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 4.2(i) GPOS
• The operating systems, which are deployed in
general computing systems, are referred as
GPOS
• The kernel of such an OS is more generalised
and it contains all kinds of services required
for executing generic applications
• GPOS are often quite non-deterministic in
behaviour

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• Their services can inject random delays into
application software and may cause slow
responsiveness of an application at
unexpected times

• Personal computers/desktop system is a

typical example for a systems where GPOS are
deployed.

• Windows XP/MS-DOS etc are examples for

GPOS.
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 4.2(ii) RTOS
• Real-time implies deterministic timing behaviour.

• Deterministic timing behaviour in RTOS context

means the OS services consumes only known and
expected amounts of time regardless the number
of services

• The RTOS decides which applications should run

in which order and how much time needs to be
allocated for each application.
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• Predictable performance is the hallmark of
well-designed RTOS.

• WindowsCE, QNX, VxWorks, MicroC/OS-II, etc

are examples of RTOS.

a) Real-time kernel
b) Hard real-time
c) Soft real-time

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 a) Real-time kernel
• The kernel of a RTOS is referred as Real-time kernel.
• it is highly specialised and it contains only the minimal
set of services required for running the user
applications/tasks

• The basic functions of RTK are

i) Task/Process management
ii) Task/Process scheduling
iii) Task/Process synchronisation
iv) Error/Exception handling
v) Memory management
vi) Interrupt handling
vii) Time management
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 Task/Process management
• Deals with setting up the memory space for
the tasks, loading the task’s code into the
memory space, allocating system resources,
setting up a task control block(TCB) for the
task and task/process termination/deletion.

• A TCB is used for holding the information

corresponding to a task.

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• TCB usually contains the following set of
information
TASK ID: task identifier number
TASK STATE: the current state of the task
TASK TYPE: task type. Indicates what is the
type for this task. the task can be a hard real
time or soft real time or background task
TASK PRIORITY: task priority( EX: Task
priority=1 for task with priority=1)
TASK CONTEXT POINTER: context pointer.
Pointer of context saving.

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• TASK MEMORY POINTER: pointers to the code
memory, data memory and stack memory for
the task.

• TASK SYSTEM RESOURCE POINTER: pointers to

systems resources(semaphores,mutex etc)
used by task.

• TASK POINTERS: pointers to other TCBs

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• Task management service utilises the TCB of a
task in the following way
 Creates a TCB for a task on creating task
Delete/Remove the TCB of a task when the
task is terminated or deleted.
Reads the TCB to get the state of task
Update the TCB with updated parameters on
need basis
Modify the TCB to change the priority of the
task dynamically

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 Task/Process Scheduling
• Deals with sharing the CPU among various
tasks/processes

• A kernel application called ‘Scheduler’ handles

the task scheduling

• Scheduler is nothing but an algorithm

implementation, which performs the efficient and
optimal scheduling of tasks to provide
deterministic behaviour.

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 Task/Process synchronisation

• Deals with synchronising the concurrent

access of resources, which is shared across
multiple tasks and the communication
between various tasks

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 Error/Exception handling
• Deals with registering and handling the errors
occurred/exceptions raised during execution
of tasks

• Insufficient memory, timeouts, deadlocks,

deadline missing, bus error/ divide by zero,
unknown instruction execution, etc. are the
examples of errors/exceptions

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 Memory management
• Compared to GPOS, the memory management
function of a n RTOS kernel is slightly different.

• RTOS makes use of “BLOCK” based memory

allocation technique, instead of the usual
dynamic memory allocation techniques used by
the GPOS.

• RTOS kernel uses blocks of fixed size of dynamic

memory and the block is allocated for a task on a
need basis.

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• Errors/Exceptions can happen at the kernel level
services or at a task level.

• Deadlock is an example for kernel level exception,

whereas timeout is an example for a task level
exception

• The OD kernel gives the information about the

error in the form of a system call(API)

GetLastError() API provided by windowsCE RTOS

is an example for a such system call.

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 Interrupt handling
• Deals with the handling of various types of
interrupts
• Interrupts provide time behaviour to systems
• Interrupts informs the processor that an
external device or an associated tasks requires
immediate attention of the CPU
• Interrupts can be either Synchronous or
Asynchronous

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• Interrupts which occurs in sync with currently
executing task is known as synchronous
interrupts
EX: software interrupts,divide by zero, memory
segmentation error, etc. are the examples of
synchronous interrupts
• Asynchronus interrupts are interrupts, which
occurs at any point of execution of any task, and
are not in sync with the currently executing task
EX: the interrupts generated by external devices
connected to the processor/controller, timer
overflow interrupts, serial data
reception/transmission interrupts

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 Time management
• Accurate time management is essential for
providing precise time reference for all
applications
• The time reference to kernel is provided by a
high-resolution Real-Time Clock(RTC) hardware
chip(hardware timer).
• The hardware timer is programmed to interrupt
the processor/controller at a fixed rate
• The timer interrupt is referred as ’timer tick’

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4.3.TASK,
PROCESS,
THREADS
 TASKS
The term ‘task’ refers to something to be done
In the operating systems, a task is defined as
the program in execution and the related
information maintained by the OS for the
program.
Task is also known as ‘job’ in OS context.
A program or part of it in execution is also
called a ‘process’
The terms ‘task’, ‘job’ and ‘process’ refer to
the same entity in the OS
 PROCESS
 A ‘process’ is a program, or part of it, in
execution.
 Process is also known as instance of a program in
execution
 multiple instances of same program can execute
simultaneously.
 A process requires various system resources like
CPU for executing the process, memory for
storing the code corresponding to the process
and associated variables, I/O devices for
information exchange etc.
 A process is sequential in execution.
 structure of process
The concept of process leads to concurrent
execution of tasks and thereby efficient
utilisation of the CPU and other system
resources.
Concurrent execution is achieved through the
sharing of CPU among the processes
A process mimics a processor in properties
and holds a set of registers, process status, a
program counter(PC) , a stack for holding the
local variables associated with the task and
the code corresponding to the process.
 STACK
(Stack Pointer)

Working Registers

Status Registers

Program Counter (PC)

Code memory Corresponding

to PROCESS
The process has three memory regions.
Namely, stack memory, data memory and
code memory

The stack memory holds all temporary data

such as variables local to the process.

Data memory holds all global data for the

process

The code memory contains the program code

corresponding to the process.
 Process states and state transition
• Creation of a process to its termination is not
a single step operation.

• The process traverses through a series of

states during its transition from the newly
created state to the terminated state

• The cycle through which a process changes its

state from ‘newly created’ to ‘execution
completed’ is known as ’process life cycle’
 CREATED

Incepted into memory

READY

BLOCKED

RUNNING

COMPLETED
 Process management

• Process management deals with the creation

of a process, setting up the memory space for
the process, loading the process’s code into
the memory space, allocating system
resources, setting up a Process control block
for process and process termination.
 THREADS
 A thread is a primitive that can execute code.

 A thread is a single sequential flow of control

within a process

 A thread is also known as light weight process.

 A process can have many threads of execution.