<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<chapter id="scheduling">
<?dbhtml filename="scheduling.html"?>
<title>Scheduling</title>
<para>One of the key aims of the operating system is to create and support
the impression that several activities are executing contemporarily. This is
true for both uniprocessor as well as multiprocessor systems. In the case of
multiprocessor systems, the activities are trully happening in parallel. The
scheduler helps to materialize this impression by planning threads on as
many processors as possible and, where this means reaches its limits, by
quickly switching among threads executing on a single processor.</para>
<section>
<title>Contexts</title>
<para>The term context refers to the set of processor resources that
define the current state of the computation or the environment and the
kernel understands it in several more or less narrow sences:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>synchronous register context,</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>asynchronous register context,</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>FPU context and</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>memory management context.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>The most narrow sence refers to the the synchronous register
context. It includes all the preserved registers as defined by the
architecture. To highlight some, the program counter and stack pointer
take part in the synchronous register context. These are the registers
that must be preserved across a procedure call and during synchronous
context switches. </para>
<para>The next type of the context understood by the kernel is the
asynchronous register context. On an interrupt, the interrupted execution
flow's state must be guaranteed to be eventually completely restored.
Therefore the interrupt context includes, among other things, the scratch
registers as defined by the architecture. As a special optimization and if
certain conditions are met, it need not include the architecture's
preserved registers. The condition mentioned in the previous sentence is
that the low-level assembly language interrupt routines don't modify the
preserved registers. The handlers usually call a higher-level C routine.
The preserved registers are then saved on the stack by the compiler
generated code of the higher-level function. In HelenOS, several
architectures can be compiled with this optimization.</para>
<para>Although the kernel does not do any floating point
arithmetics<footnote>
<para>Some architectures (e.g. ia64) inevitably use a fixed set of
floating point registers to carry out its normal operations.</para>
</footnote>, it must protect FPU context of userspace threads against
destruction by other threads. Moreover, only a fraction of userspace
programs use the floating point unit. HelenOS contains a generic framework
for switching FPU context only when the switch is forced.</para>
<para>The last member of the context family is the memory management
context. It includes memory management registers that identify address
spaces on hardware level (i.e. ASIDs and page tables pointers).</para>
<section>
<title>Synchronous context switches</title>
<para>The scheduler, but also other pieces of the kernel, make heavy use
of synchronous context switches, because it is a natural vehicle not
only for changes in control flow, but also for switching between two
kernel stacks. Two functions figure in a synchronous context switch
implementation: <code>context_save</code> and
<code>context_restore</code>. Note that these two functions break the
natural perception of the linear C code execution flow starting at
function's entry point and ending on one of the function's exit
points.</para>
<para>When the <code>context_save</code> function is called, the
synchronous context is saved in a memory structure passed to it. After
executing <code>context_save</code>, the caller is returned 1 as a
return value. The execution of instructions continues as normally until
<code>context_restore</code> is called. For the caller, it seems like
the call never returns<footnote>
<para>Which might be a source of problems with variable liveliness
after <code>context_restore</code>.</para>
</footnote>. Nevertheless, a synchronous register context, which is
saved in a memory structure passed to <code>context_restore,</code> is
restored, thus transfering the control flow to the place of occurrence
of the corresponding call to <code>context_save</code>. From the
perspective of the caller of the corresponding
<code>context_save</code>, it looks as though a return from
<code>context_save</code>. However, this time a return value of 0 is
returned.</para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Scheduler</title>
<para>How scheduler designed and how it works.</para>
</section>
</chapter>