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OSKit 20000505 snapshot, realtime & sched support: Cinco de Mayo
To celebrate "Cinco de Mayo" we are making another OSKit snapshot.
Besides the usual round of bug fixes and minor improvements, the major
addition is improved support for realtime. The OSKit's structure
enabled significant support with only a modest amount of code.
We added two currently orthogonal features:
* A slightly modified version of the oskit device support library
(-loskit_dev) provides an extended API for registering realtime
device handlers that ensure that IRQs are delivered with minimum
possible latency. Measurements indicate that average latency for
a realtime IRQ handler is just under 5 microseconds on a 200Mhz machine.
This allows, for example, reliable support for high speed data acquisition.
* A moderate restructuring of the pthreads scheduling support allows
different types of schedulers to be easily plugged in.
Specifically, you can plug in the standard POSIX scheduler, and/or a
realtime scheduler. For the POSIX scheduler, the original pthreads
scheduler is available. For a realtime scheduler, you can use the
simple Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduler we threw together.
Or, you can easily write your own scheduler to replace either one.
The realtime support is discussed in detail in oskit/threads/README.SCHED,
also available at http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/README.SCHED .
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
Thanks to all those who have sent in bug reports and/or fixes for past
snapshots. We appreciate your continued involvement in making the OSKit
more useful for everyone.
Happy "Cinco de Mayo" from the Flux Group and the
University of Utah Department of Computer Science!
ps: This *really* was released on Cinco De Mayo. Lets blame a *very* large
internet service provider for the delay in getting it into your hands.
Follow-Ups: