Embedded Systems Architecture

The task block

Tasks have their representation in the system in the form of a task block structure. This object contains all the information needed for the scheduler to keep track of the state of the task at all times, and is dependent on the design of the scheduler. Tasks might be defined at compile time and started after the kernel boots, or spawned and terminated while the system is running.

Each task block may contain a pointer to the start function, that defines the beginning of the code executed when the task is spawned, and a set of optional arguments. Memory is assigned for each task to use it as its private stack region. This way, the execution context of each thread and process is separated from all the others, and the values of ...