Adding a new scheduling algorithm to Fiasco.OC

[Valentin Hauner]

Hi Adam,

thank you, that makes things clearer to me, especially the information
of the timer for managing preemption.

In a previous mail, you stated that a thread has a Sched_context object
embedded that stores scheduling-related information. However, I cannot
find a 1:1 relation from a Thread to a Sched_context object.
I've found various calls of the sched_context() method in 'thread.cpp',
which is defined in 'context.cpp'. Furthermore, there are several calls
of the current() method in 'thread.cpp' (returning the current context),
which is defined in 'context_base.cpp'.

So my main question is: What is the exact relation of a Thread object to
all these classes?

I assume that a Context object is cpu-specific, i.e. each Context object
points to its home cpu. Is that right? This would make sense since there
is a home_cpu attribute and a schedule() method in that class that
handles the scheduling on a certain cpu.

But what's the matter with Sched_context?
It seems to me that there is no 1:1 relation from a Thread to a
Sched_context since the sched_context() method called in 'thread.cpp' is
defined in 'context.cpp'. So is a Sched_context cpu-specific, too? This
would not make sense to me as a Sched_context object stores
thread-specific information such as the priority and the remaining
quantum of a thread.

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Valentin

On 07/02/2014 12:30 AM, Adam Lackorzynski wrote:
> On Mon Jun 30, 2014 at 12:08:00 +0200, Valentin Hauner wrote:
>   
>> I've added a new config directive for 'sched_edf' to the Modules.* files
>> in 'kernel/fiasco/src', that is:
>> PREPROCESS_PARTS-$(CONFIG_SCHED_EDF) += sched_edf
>> This enables the user to compile the kernel with EDF scheduling when
>> setting this directive, right?
>>     
> This adds the preprocess tag 'sched_edf' which are used in the
> expressions for the INTERFACE and IMPLEMENTATION blocks. With that you
> can chose whether a block of code is included in compilation or not.
>
>   
>> I want to implement the preemptive EDF algorithm, i.e. any running task
>> must be preempted if a new task with a shorter deadline arrives.
>> dominates() from sched_context-edf.cpp and next_to_run() from
>> ready_queue_edf.cpp are designed to choose the one with the shortest
>> deadline, but how can I tell Fiasco to act preemptive?
>>     
> So, on one CPU only one thread can be running at a time. Others might be
> ready to execute but not running. Regarding preemption, the timer
> interrupt drives scheduling (see Thread::handle_timer_interrupt) which
> calls schedule() whenever there's something to do, i.e. a timeout has
> expired. Of course schedule() might also be called for other reasons,
> for example when threads change their ready state. In the scheduler
> implementation you'll see whenever some new thread arrives or one
> leaves, so I think the preemption as you need it is already there.
>
>
>
> Adam