5. Multitasking Systems – an Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the basics of multitasking systems by setting out to describe:

  • What the tasking model of software is
  • The benefits of modeling software as a set of collaborating tasks – a multitasking structure
  • How interrupts can be used as a mechanism for implementing concurrency
  • What, in general terms, a real-time operating system (RTOS) is and what it does
  • How an RTOS can be used as a mechanism for implementing concurrency
  • How task execution is controlled – scheduling principles
  • Problems that may be met when tasks share resources, and showing how these can be resolved
  • Features needed to enable tasks to communicate with each other – inter-task communication

5.1 The ...

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