RTEMS C User's Guide
The RTEMS RAM Workspace is a user-specified block of memory reserved for use by RTEMS. The application should NOT modify this memory. This area consists primarily of the RTEMS data structures whose exact size depends upon the values specified in the Configuration Table. In addition, task stacks and floating point context areas are dynamically allocated from the RTEMS RAM Workspace.
The confdefs.h mechanism calcalutes the size
of the RTEMS RAM Workspace automatically. It assumes that
all tasks are floating point and that all will be allocated
the miminum stack space. This calculation also automatically
includes the memory that will be allocated for internal use
by RTEMS. The following macros may be set
by the application to make the calculation
of memory required more accurate:
CONFIGURE_MEMORY_OVERHEAD
CONFIGURE_EXTRA_TASK_STACKS
The starting address of the RTEMS RAM Workspace must
be aligned on a four-byte boundary. Failure to properly align
the workspace area will result in the
rtems_fatal_error_occurred
directive being invoked with the
RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS error code.
A worksheet is provided in the Memory Requirements
chapter of the Applications Supplement document for a specific
target processor to assist the user in calculating the minimum
size of the RTEMS RAM Workspace for each application. The value
calculated with this worksheet is the minimum value that should
be specified as the work_space_size parameter of the
Configuration Table.
The allocation of objects can operate in two modes. The default mode has an object number ceiling. No more than the specified number of objects can be allocated from the RTEMS RAM Workspace. The number of objects specified in the particular API Configuration table fields are allocated at initialisation. The second mode allows the number of objects to grow to use the available free memory in the RTEMS RAM Workspace.
The auto-extending mode can be enabled individually for each object
type by using the macro rtems_resource_unlimited. This takes a value
as a parameter, and is used to set the object maximum number field in
an API Configuration table. The value is an allocation unit size. When
RTEMS is required to grow the object table it is grown by this
size. The kernel will return the object memory back to the RTEMS RAM Workspace
when an object is destroyed. The kernel will only return an allocated
block of objects to the RTEMS RAM Workspace if at least half the allocation
size of free objects remain allocated. RTEMS always keeps one
allocation block of objects allocated. Here is an example of using
rtems_resource_unlimited:
#define CONFIGURE_MAXIMUM_TASKS rtems_resource_unlimited(5)
The user is cautioned that future versions of RTEMS may not have the same memory requirements per object. Although the value calculated is suficient for a particular target processor and release of RTEMS, memory usage is subject to change across versions and target processors. The user is advised to allocate somewhat more memory than the worksheet recommends to insure compatibility with future releases for a specific target processor and other target processors. To avoid problems, the user should recalculate the memory requirements each time one of the following events occurs:
Failure to provide enough space in the RTEMS RAM
Workspace will result in the
rtems_fatal_error_occurred directive
being invoked with the appropriate error code.
RTEMS C User's Guide
Copyright © 1988-2000 OAR Corporation