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RTEMS 4.7.2 On-Line Library


Key Concepts Communication and Synchronization

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2.3: Communication and Synchronization

In real-time multitasking applications, the ability for cooperating execution threads to communicate and synchronize with each other is imperative. A real-time executive should provide an application with the following capabilities:

Most RTEMS managers can be used to provide some form of communication and/or synchronization. However, managers dedicated specifically to communication and synchronization provide well established mechanisms which directly map to the application's varying needs. This level of flexibility allows the application designer to match the features of a particular manager with the complexity of communication and synchronization required. The following managers were specifically designed for communication and synchronization:

The semaphore manager supports mutual exclusion involving the synchronization of access to one or more shared user resources. Binary semaphores may utilize the optional priority inheritance algorithm to avoid the problem of priority inversion. The message manager supports both communication and synchronization, while the event manager primarily provides a high performance synchronization mechanism. The signal manager supports only asynchronous communication and is typically used for exception handling.


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