The following scheduler operations return a thread in need for help
- unblock,
- change priority, and
- yield.
A thread in need for help is a thread that encounters a scheduler state
change from scheduled to ready or a thread that cannot be scheduled in
an unblock operation. Such a thread can ask threads which depend on
resources owned by this thread for help.
Add a new ask for help scheduler operation. This operation is used by
_Scheduler_Ask_for_help() to help threads in need for help returned by
the operations mentioned above. This operation is also used by
_Scheduler_Thread_change_resource_root() in case the root of a resource
sub-tree changes. A use case is the ownership change of a resource.
In case it is not possible to schedule a thread in need for help, then
the corresponding scheduler node will be placed into the set of ready
scheduler nodes of the scheduler instance. Once a state change from
ready to scheduled happens for this scheduler node it may be used to
schedule the thread in need for help.
The current implementation of task migration in RTEMS has some
implications with respect to the interrupt latency. It is crucial to
preserve the system invariant that a task can execute on at most one
processor in the system at a time. This is accomplished with a boolean
indicator in the task context. The processor architecture specific
low-level task context switch code will mark that a task context is no
longer executing and waits that the heir context stopped execution
before it restores the heir context and resumes execution of the heir
task. So there is one point in time in which a processor is without a
task. This is essential to avoid cyclic dependencies in case multiple
tasks migrate at once. Otherwise some supervising entity is necessary to
prevent life-locks. Such a global supervisor would lead to scalability
problems so this approach is not used. Currently the thread dispatch is
performed with interrupts disabled. So in case the heir task is
currently executing on another processor then this prolongs the time of
disabled interrupts since one processor has to wait for another
processor to make progress.
It is difficult to avoid this issue with the interrupt latency since
interrupts normally store the context of the interrupted task on its
stack. In case a task is marked as not executing we must not use its
task stack to store such an interrupt context. We cannot use the heir
stack before it stopped execution on another processor. So if we enable
interrupts during this transition we have to provide an alternative task
independent stack for this time frame. This issue needs further
investigation.
