Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems

From	pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.arch.embedded
Subject	Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems
Date	2020-01-03 14:41 +0100
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<qung9m$m79$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)

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I have always worked on non real-time systems, i.e. when the reaction of 
the system to an event should occur in a reasonable time. For example, 
when the user presses a button, a motor should start rotating. If the 
motor starts after 100us or 100ms is not so important.

I never used RTOS, so the architecture of my firmware is based on 
"superloop technique" (background tasks running in the loop and interrupts).

while(1) {
   task1();
   task2();
   ...
}

All the tasks don't block, ever. As a rule of thumb, I accept a block 
time of maximum 100us-1ms. When the task needs to block for a greater 
amount, I try to implement it as a state-machine, avoiding blocking.

The ISRs are very lightweight: they only set/get some flags or push/pop 
a byte to/from FIFO queues.
With 32-bits MCUs (modern Cortex-M MCUs), I can change 32-bits variables 
(mainly the ticks of the system) in ISRs without caring of 
race-conditions that could occur on 8-bits MCUS when the background 
tasks access the same variables.

In the past I used this architecture with success even in medium-complex 
systems featuring Ethernet, lwip, mbedTLS, USB and touchscreen (emWin).

Sincerely I think this architecture is good enough for all non real-time 
systems, so I don't understand why to use a RTOS in those cases.
However I need to use a RTOS (FreeRTOS) for the next project, because it 
is one of the requirement. It isn't a real-time system, but the RTOS is 
required.

I think I can convert my architecture to RTOS by creating a task for 
each of the function I call in the superloop and starting the OS 
scheduler. However now the task function can't return, so I can write it 
in the following way:

void task1_main(void) {
   while(1) {
     task1();
   }
}

task1() can be the *same* function of the superloop architecture.

I can assign each task the same priority: in this case, FreeRTOS will 
use round-robin scheduling, giving all the tasks the same opportunity to 
run.

Is it correct?

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Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2020-01-03 14:41 +0100
  Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-03 15:19 +0100
    Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2020-01-05 01:25 +0100
      Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 13:32 -0600
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-01-05 16:49 -0500
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 21:05 -0600
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-05 17:08 -0700
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 21:26 -0600
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-05 22:10 -0700
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-06 07:37 -0600
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-06 17:21 -0700
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-07 19:23 -0600
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-01-06 20:36 -0500
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-07 01:38 -0600
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-01-07 06:53 -0500
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2020-01-06 07:13 -0500
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-07 10:11 +0100
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-01-07 07:05 -0500
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-07 19:34 -0600
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-06 10:44 +0200
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-06 02:51 -0700
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-06 15:39 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2020-01-06 13:29 -0500
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-06 14:38 -0700
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-07 07:05 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2020-01-07 13:09 -0500
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2020-01-07 20:53 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2020-01-08 08:43 +1100
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-08 00:33 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2020-01-08 15:26 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-08 00:08 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-07 10:37 +0100
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-06 16:10 -0700
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-07 07:37 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-07 01:49 -0600
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-07 06:43 -0700
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-07 10:21 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-07 06:42 -0700
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-01-07 22:23 -0500
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-09 22:07 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-07 10:54 +0200
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-07 06:43 -0700
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Hans-Bernhard Bröker <HBBroeker@t-online.de> - 2020-01-06 18:01 +0100
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2020-01-06 19:47 +0200
    Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2020-01-05 01:58 +0100
      Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2020-01-05 14:26 +1100
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-05 11:21 +0200
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-05 14:07 +0100
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-05 17:46 +0200
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-05 19:08 +0100
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-05 13:56 +0100
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 13:39 -0600
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2020-01-06 07:44 +1100
            Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 21:00 -0600
              Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2020-01-06 14:50 +1100
                Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-06 07:12 -0600
      Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2020-01-04 22:34 -0800
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-01-05 14:12 +0100
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2020-01-05 18:00 +0200
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 13:44 -0600
      Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2020-01-06 14:52 -0500
      Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2020-01-06 15:05 -0500
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems gtwrek@sonic.net (gtwrek) - 2020-01-06 22:41 +0000
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2020-01-06 19:50 -0700
          Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2020-01-07 13:26 -0500
  Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2020-01-03 16:28 +0200
    Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2020-01-05 01:37 +0100
      Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> - 2020-01-05 13:46 -0600
        Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2020-01-05 22:44 +0200
  Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2020-01-03 11:49 -0800
  Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems upsidedown@downunder.com - 2020-01-03 22:51 +0200
    Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2020-01-05 01:48 +0100
  Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Joe Chisolm <jchisolm6@earthlink.net> - 2020-01-03 15:34 -0600
  Re: Task priorities in non strictly real-time systems Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-01-03 21:46 -0500

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