Philippe Gerum wrote: > On Thu, 2006-08-17 at 15:27 +0200, Jan Kiszka wrote: >> Hi, >> >> the conflict between skins preferring aperiodic timing vs. skin >> requiring periodic mode popped up once again on xenomai-help. One way >> out of this, likely THE way, is to map such tick-driven skins on a >> periodic timer over aperiodic mode (and drop periodic low-level support >> completely at the same time). >> >> Let's start some discussion how this can be done, specifically as Gilles >> and I are already turning the xntimer subsystem upside down (almost). If >> we want co-existence of high-res timing of, say, the posix skin while >> the vxworks skin runs over a tick-timer, we need some kind of "context" >> for timing related functions. >> >> Simple example: xnpod_suspend_thread() expects a timeout as "xnticks", >> i.e. either in nanoseconds or in ticks of the underlying periodic timer. >> This depends on the global timer mode of the pod, and that's a no-go for >> concurrent modes as sketched above. Rather, the thread should encode >> which kind of timing mode to use, even better the threads timers. >> >> We currently dispatch xntimer_start globally to the different timer >> subsystems (if periodic mode is enabled). What about deriving the start >> function from the timer itself in the future? If a timer was created as >> aperiodic, things happen as usual in aperiodic mode, and the timeout are >> interpreted as nanoseconds. If the timer is periodic, we interpret the >> timeout in ticks and map them on a second-level timing subsystem >> (probably a wheel) that itself is driven by a single periodic timer in >> the first-level system (just like the host tick). >> >> Am I heading in the right direction? Is it feasible? Any other ideas? > > I like this idea; it's simple and elegant, having only a low impact on > the existing interfaces. > > The two-level timer handling moving the BSD wheel on top of the > aperiodic shot is definitely a clean approach, which adds no overhead to > the existing periodic timer management. This would also allow to get rid > of the specific Adeos support for periodic hw management. >
One could then even think about making the support switch for periodic mode a per-skin option for those that support both modes. That all sounds thrilling, but will certainly require some noticeable refactoring. Maybe we can start with adding the required bits to the existing aperiodic timer subsystem while keeping the periodic infrastructure. Oh my dear, I'm already regretting having made that suggestion... ;) Jan
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