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authorAmar Takhar <amar@rtems.org>2016-01-17 19:19:43 -0500
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+Symmetric Multiprocessing Services
+##################################
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+The Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) support of the RTEMS 4.10.99.0 is
+available on
+
+- ARM,
+
+- PowerPC, and
+
+- SPARC.
+
+It must be explicitly enabled via the ``--enable-smp`` configure command
+line option. To enable SMP in the application configuration see `Enable SMP Support for Applications`_. The default
+scheduler for SMP applications supports up to 32 processors and is a global
+fixed priority scheduler, see also `Configuring Clustered Schedulers`_. For example applications see:file:`testsuites/smptests`.
+
+*WARNING: The SMP support in RTEMS is work in progress. Before you
+start using this RTEMS version for SMP ask on the RTEMS mailing list.*
+
+This chapter describes the services related to Symmetric Multiprocessing
+provided by RTEMS.
+
+The application level services currently provided are:
+
+- ``rtems_get_processor_count`` - Get processor count
+
+- ``rtems_get_current_processor`` - Get current processor index
+
+- ``rtems_scheduler_ident`` - Get ID of a scheduler
+
+- ``rtems_scheduler_get_processor_set`` - Get processor set of a scheduler
+
+- ``rtems_task_get_scheduler`` - Get scheduler of a task
+
+- ``rtems_task_set_scheduler`` - Set scheduler of a task
+
+- ``rtems_task_get_affinity`` - Get task processor affinity
+
+- ``rtems_task_set_affinity`` - Set task processor affinity
+
+Background
+==========
+
+Uniprocessor versus SMP Parallelism
+-----------------------------------
+
+Uniprocessor systems have long been used in embedded systems. In this hardware
+model, there are some system execution characteristics which have long been
+taken for granted:
+
+- one task executes at a time
+
+- hardware events result in interrupts
+
+There is no true parallelism. Even when interrupts appear to occur
+at the same time, they are processed in largely a serial fashion.
+This is true even when the interupt service routines are allowed to
+nest. From a tasking viewpoint, it is the responsibility of the real-time
+operatimg system to simulate parallelism by switching between tasks.
+These task switches occur in response to hardware interrupt events and explicit
+application events such as blocking for a resource or delaying.
+
+With symmetric multiprocessing, the presence of multiple processors
+allows for true concurrency and provides for cost-effective performance
+improvements. Uniprocessors tend to increase performance by increasing
+clock speed and complexity. This tends to lead to hot, power hungry
+microprocessors which are poorly suited for many embedded applications.
+
+The true concurrency is in sharp contrast to the single task and
+interrupt model of uniprocessor systems. This results in a fundamental
+change to uniprocessor system characteristics listed above. Developers
+are faced with a different set of characteristics which, in turn, break
+some existing assumptions and result in new challenges. In an SMP system
+with N processors, these are the new execution characteristics.
+
+- N tasks execute in parallel
+
+- hardware events result in interrupts
+
+There is true parallelism with a task executing on each processor and
+the possibility of interrupts occurring on each processor. Thus in contrast
+to their being one task and one interrupt to consider on a uniprocessor,
+there are N tasks and potentially N simultaneous interrupts to consider
+on an SMP system.
+
+This increase in hardware complexity and presence of true parallelism
+results in the application developer needing to be even more cautious
+about mutual exclusion and shared data access than in a uniprocessor
+embedded system. Race conditions that never or rarely happened when an
+application executed on a uniprocessor system, become much more likely
+due to multiple threads executing in parallel. On a uniprocessor system,
+these race conditions would only happen when a task switch occurred at
+just the wrong moment. Now there are N-1 tasks executing in parallel
+all the time and this results in many more opportunities for small
+windows in critical sections to be hit.
+
+Task Affinity
+-------------
+.. index:: task affinity
+.. index:: thread affinity
+
+RTEMS provides services to manipulate the affinity of a task. Affinity
+is used to specify the subset of processors in an SMP system on which
+a particular task can execute.
+
+By default, tasks have an affinity which allows them to execute on any
+available processor.
+
+Task affinity is a possible feature to be supported by SMP-aware
+schedulers. However, only a subset of the available schedulers support
+affinity. Although the behavior is scheduler specific, if the scheduler
+does not support affinity, it is likely to ignore all attempts to set
+affinity.
+
+The scheduler with support for arbitary processor affinities uses a proof of
+concept implementation. See https://devel.rtems.org/ticket/2510.
+
+Task Migration
+--------------
+.. index:: task migration
+.. index:: thread migration
+
+With more than one processor in the system tasks can migrate from one processor
+to another. There are three reasons why tasks migrate in RTEMS.
+
+- The scheduler changes explicitly via ``rtems_task_set_scheduler()`` or
+ similar directives.
+
+- The task resumes execution after a blocking operation. On a priority
+ based scheduler it will evict the lowest priority task currently assigned to a
+ processor in the processor set managed by the scheduler instance.
+
+- The task moves temporarily to another scheduler instance due to locking
+ protocols like *Migratory Priority Inheritance* or the*Multiprocessor Resource Sharing Protocol*.
+
+Task migration should be avoided so that the working set of a task can stay on
+the most local cache level.
+
+The current implementation of task migration in RTEMS has some implications
+with respect to the interrupt latency. It is crucial to preserve the system
+invariant that a task can execute on at most one processor in the system at a
+time. This is accomplished with a boolean indicator in the task context. The
+processor architecture specific low-level task context switch code will mark
+that a task context is no longer executing and waits that the heir context
+stopped execution before it restores the heir context and resumes execution of
+the heir task. So there is one point in time in which a processor is without a
+task. This is essential to avoid cyclic dependencies in case multiple tasks
+migrate at once. Otherwise some supervising entity is necessary to prevent
+life-locks. Such a global supervisor would lead to scalability problems so
+this approach is not used. Currently the thread dispatch is performed with
+interrupts disabled. So in case the heir task is currently executing on
+another processor then this prolongs the time of disabled interrupts since one
+processor has to wait for another processor to make progress.
+
+It is difficult to avoid this issue with the interrupt latency since interrupts
+normally store the context of the interrupted task on its stack. In case a
+task is marked as not executing we must not use its task stack to store such an
+interrupt context. We cannot use the heir stack before it stopped execution on
+another processor. So if we enable interrupts during this transition we have
+to provide an alternative task independent stack for this time frame. This
+issue needs further investigation.
+
+Clustered Scheduling
+--------------------
+
+We have clustered scheduling in case the set of processors of a system is
+partitioned into non-empty pairwise-disjoint subsets. These subsets are called
+clusters. Clusters with a cardinality of one are partitions. Each cluster is
+owned by exactly one scheduler instance.
+
+Clustered scheduling helps to control the worst-case latencies in
+multi-processor systems, see *Brandenburg, Björn B.: Scheduling and
+Locking in Multiprocessor Real-Time Operating Systems. PhD thesis, 2011.http://www.cs.unc.edu/~bbb/diss/brandenburg-diss.pdf*. The goal is to
+reduce the amount of shared state in the system and thus prevention of lock
+contention. Modern multi-processor systems tend to have several layers of data
+and instruction caches. With clustered scheduling it is possible to honour the
+cache topology of a system and thus avoid expensive cache synchronization
+traffic. It is easy to implement. The problem is to provide synchronization
+primitives for inter-cluster synchronization (more than one cluster is involved
+in the synchronization process). In RTEMS there are currently four means
+available
+
+- events,
+
+- message queues,
+
+- semaphores using the `Priority Inheritance`_
+ protocol (priority boosting), and
+
+- semaphores using the `Multiprocessor Resource Sharing Protocol`_ (MrsP).
+
+The clustered scheduling approach enables separation of functions with
+real-time requirements and functions that profit from fairness and high
+throughput provided the scheduler instances are fully decoupled and adequate
+inter-cluster synchronization primitives are used. This is work in progress.
+
+For the configuration of clustered schedulers see `Configuring Clustered Schedulers`_.
+
+To set the scheduler of a task see `SCHEDULER_IDENT - Get ID of a scheduler`_
+and `TASK_SET_SCHEDULER - Set scheduler of a task`_.
+
+Task Priority Queues
+--------------------
+
+Due to the support for clustered scheduling the task priority queues need
+special attention. It makes no sense to compare the priority values of two
+different scheduler instances. Thus, it is not possible to simply use one
+plain priority queue for tasks of different scheduler instances.
+
+One solution to this problem is to use two levels of queues. The top level
+queue provides FIFO ordering and contains priority queues. Each priority queue
+is associated with a scheduler instance and contains only tasks of this
+scheduler instance. Tasks are enqueued in the priority queue corresponding to
+their scheduler instance. In case this priority queue was empty, then it is
+appended to the FIFO. To dequeue a task the highest priority task of the first
+priority queue in the FIFO is selected. Then the first priority queue is
+removed from the FIFO. In case the previously first priority queue is not
+empty, then it is appended to the FIFO. So there is FIFO fairness with respect
+to the highest priority task of each scheduler instances. See also *Brandenburg, Björn B.: A fully preemptive multiprocessor semaphore protocol for
+latency-sensitive real-time applications. In Proceedings of the 25th Euromicro
+Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2013), pages 292–302, 2013.http://www.mpi-sws.org/~bbb/papers/pdf/ecrts13b.pdf*.
+
+Such a two level queue may need a considerable amount of memory if fast enqueue
+and dequeue operations are desired (depends on the scheduler instance count).
+To mitigate this problem an approch of the FreeBSD kernel was implemented in
+RTEMS. We have the invariant that a task can be enqueued on at most one task
+queue. Thus, we need only as many queues as we have tasks. Each task is
+equipped with spare task queue which it can give to an object on demand. The
+task queue uses a dedicated memory space independent of the other memory used
+for the task itself. In case a task needs to block, then there are two options
+
+- the object already has task queue, then the task enqueues itself to this
+ already present queue and the spare task queue of the task is added to a list
+ of free queues for this object, or
+
+- otherwise, then the queue of the task is given to the object and the task
+ enqueues itself to this queue.
+
+In case the task is dequeued, then there are two options
+
+- the task is the last task on the queue, then it removes this queue from
+ the object and reclaims it for its own purpose, or
+
+- otherwise, then the task removes one queue from the free list of the
+ object and reclaims it for its own purpose.
+
+Since there are usually more objects than tasks, this actually reduces the
+memory demands. In addition the objects contain only a pointer to the task
+queue structure. This helps to hide implementation details and makes it
+possible to use self-contained synchronization objects in Newlib and GCC (C++
+and OpenMP run-time support).
+
+Scheduler Helping Protocol
+--------------------------
+
+The scheduler provides a helping protocol to support locking protocols like*Migratory Priority Inheritance* or the *Multiprocessor Resource
+Sharing Protocol*. Each ready task can use at least one scheduler node at a
+time to gain access to a processor. Each scheduler node has an owner, a user
+and an optional idle task. The owner of a scheduler node is determined a task
+creation and never changes during the life time of a scheduler node. The user
+of a scheduler node may change due to the scheduler helping protocol. A
+scheduler node is in one of the four scheduler help states:
+
+:dfn:`help yourself`
+ This scheduler node is solely used by the owner task. This task owns no
+ resources using a helping protocol and thus does not take part in the scheduler
+ helping protocol. No help will be provided for other tasks.
+
+:dfn:`help active owner`
+ This scheduler node is owned by a task actively owning a resource and can be
+ used to help out tasks.
+ In case this scheduler node changes its state from ready to scheduled and the
+ task executes using another node, then an idle task will be provided as a user
+ of this node to temporarily execute on behalf of the owner task. Thus lower
+ priority tasks are denied access to the processors of this scheduler instance.
+ In case a task actively owning a resource performs a blocking operation, then
+ an idle task will be used also in case this node is in the scheduled state.
+
+:dfn:`help active rival`
+ This scheduler node is owned by a task actively obtaining a resource currently
+ owned by another task and can be used to help out tasks.
+ The task owning this node is ready and will give away its processor in case the
+ task owning the resource asks for help.
+
+:dfn:`help passive`
+ This scheduler node is owned by a task obtaining a resource currently owned by
+ another task and can be used to help out tasks.
+ The task owning this node is blocked.
+
+The following scheduler operations return a task in need for help
+
+- unblock,
+
+- change priority,
+
+- yield, and
+
+- ask for help.
+
+A task in need for help is a task that encounters a scheduler state change from
+scheduled to ready (this is a pre-emption by a higher priority task) or a task
+that cannot be scheduled in an unblock operation. Such a task can ask tasks
+which depend on resources owned by this task for help.
+
+In case it is not possible to schedule a task in need for help, then the
+scheduler nodes available for the task will be placed into the set of ready
+scheduler nodes of the corresponding scheduler instances. Once a state change
+from ready to scheduled happens for one of scheduler nodes it will be used to
+schedule the task in need for help.
+
+The ask for help scheduler operation is used to help tasks in need for help
+returned by the operations mentioned above. This operation is also used in
+case the root of a resource sub-tree owned by a task changes.
+
+The run-time of the ask for help procedures depend on the size of the resource
+tree of the task needing help and other resource trees in case tasks in need
+for help are produced during this operation. Thus the worst-case latency in
+the system depends on the maximum resource tree size of the application.
+
+Critical Section Techniques and SMP
+-----------------------------------
+
+As discussed earlier, SMP systems have opportunities for true parallelism
+which was not possible on uniprocessor systems. Consequently, multiple
+techniques that provided adequate critical sections on uniprocessor
+systems are unsafe on SMP systems. In this section, some of these
+unsafe techniques will be discussed.
+
+In general, applications must use proper operating system provided mutual
+exclusion mechanisms to ensure correct behavior. This primarily means
+the use of binary semaphores or mutexes to implement critical sections.
+
+Disable Interrupts and Interrupt Locks
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+A low overhead means to ensure mutual exclusion in uni-processor configurations
+is to disable interrupts around a critical section. This is commonly used in
+device driver code and throughout the operating system core. On SMP
+configurations, however, disabling the interrupts on one processor has no
+effect on other processors. So, this is insufficient to ensure system wide
+mutual exclusion. The macros
+
+- ``rtems_interrupt_disable()``,
+
+- ``rtems_interrupt_enable()``, and
+
+- ``rtems_interrupt_flush()``
+
+are disabled on SMP configurations and its use will lead to compiler warnings
+and linker errors. In the unlikely case that interrupts must be disabled on
+the current processor, then the
+
+- ``rtems_interrupt_local_disable()``, and
+
+- ``rtems_interrupt_local_enable()``
+
+macros are now available in all configurations.
+
+Since disabling of interrupts is not enough to ensure system wide mutual
+exclusion on SMP, a new low-level synchronization primitive was added - the
+interrupt locks. They are a simple API layer on top of the SMP locks used for
+low-level synchronization in the operating system core. Currently they are
+implemented as a ticket lock. On uni-processor configurations they degenerate
+to simple interrupt disable/enable sequences. It is disallowed to acquire a
+single interrupt lock in a nested way. This will result in an infinite loop
+with interrupts disabled. While converting legacy code to interrupt locks care
+must be taken to avoid this situation.
+.. code:: c
+
+ void legacy_code_with_interrupt_disable_enable( void )
+ {
+ rtems_interrupt_level level;
+ rtems_interrupt_disable( level );
+ /* Some critical stuff \*/
+ rtems_interrupt_enable( level );
+ }
+ RTEMS_INTERRUPT_LOCK_DEFINE( static, lock, "Name" )
+ void smp_ready_code_with_interrupt_lock( void )
+ {
+ rtems_interrupt_lock_context lock_context;
+ rtems_interrupt_lock_acquire( &lock, &lock_context );
+ /* Some critical stuff \*/
+ rtems_interrupt_lock_release( &lock, &lock_context );
+ }
+
+The ``rtems_interrupt_lock`` structure is empty on uni-processor
+configurations. Empty structures have a different size in C
+(implementation-defined, zero in case of GCC) and C++ (implementation-defined
+non-zero value, one in case of GCC). Thus the``RTEMS_INTERRUPT_LOCK_DECLARE()``, ``RTEMS_INTERRUPT_LOCK_DEFINE()``,``RTEMS_INTERRUPT_LOCK_MEMBER()``, and``RTEMS_INTERRUPT_LOCK_REFERENCE()`` macros are provided to ensure ABI
+compatibility.
+
+Highest Priority Task Assumption
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+On a uniprocessor system, it is safe to assume that when the highest
+priority task in an application executes, it will execute without being
+preempted until it voluntarily blocks. Interrupts may occur while it is
+executing, but there will be no context switch to another task unless
+the highest priority task voluntarily initiates it.
+
+Given the assumption that no other tasks will have their execution
+interleaved with the highest priority task, it is possible for this
+task to be constructed such that it does not need to acquire a binary
+semaphore or mutex for protected access to shared data.
+
+In an SMP system, it cannot be assumed there will never be a single task
+executing. It should be assumed that every processor is executing another
+application task. Further, those tasks will be ones which would not have
+been executed in a uniprocessor configuration and should be assumed to
+have data synchronization conflicts with what was formerly the highest
+priority task which executed without conflict.
+
+Disable Preemption
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+On a uniprocessor system, disabling preemption in a task is very similar
+to making the highest priority task assumption. While preemption is
+disabled, no task context switches will occur unless the task initiates
+them voluntarily. And, just as with the highest priority task assumption,
+there are N-1 processors also running tasks. Thus the assumption that no
+other tasks will run while the task has preemption disabled is violated.
+
+Task Unique Data and SMP
+------------------------
+
+Per task variables are a service commonly provided by real-time operating
+systems for application use. They work by allowing the application
+to specify a location in memory (typically a ``void *``) which is
+logically added to the context of a task. On each task switch, the
+location in memory is stored and each task can have a unique value in
+the same memory location. This memory location is directly accessed as a
+variable in a program.
+
+This works well in a uniprocessor environment because there is one task
+executing and one memory location containing a task-specific value. But
+it is fundamentally broken on an SMP system because there are always N
+tasks executing. With only one location in memory, N-1 tasks will not
+have the correct value.
+
+This paradigm for providing task unique data values is fundamentally
+broken on SMP systems.
+
+Classic API Per Task Variables
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The Classic API provides three directives to support per task variables. These are:
+
+- ``rtems_task_variable_add`` - Associate per task variable
+
+- ``rtems_task_variable_get`` - Obtain value of a a per task variable
+
+- ``rtems_task_variable_delete`` - Remove per task variable
+
+As task variables are unsafe for use on SMP systems, the use of these services
+must be eliminated in all software that is to be used in an SMP environment.
+The task variables API is disabled on SMP. Its use will lead to compile-time
+and link-time errors. It is recommended that the application developer consider
+the use of POSIX Keys or Thread Local Storage (TLS). POSIX Keys are available
+in all RTEMS configurations. For the availablity of TLS on a particular
+architecture please consult the *RTEMS CPU Architecture Supplement*.
+
+The only remaining user of task variables in the RTEMS code base is the Ada
+support. So basically Ada is not available on RTEMS SMP.
+
+OpenMP
+------
+
+OpenMP support for RTEMS is available via the GCC provided libgomp. There is
+libgomp support for RTEMS in the POSIX configuration of libgomp since GCC 4.9
+(requires a Newlib snapshot after 2015-03-12). In GCC 6.1 or later (requires a
+Newlib snapshot after 2015-07-30 for <sys/lock.h> provided self-contained
+synchronization objects) there is a specialized libgomp configuration for RTEMS
+which offers a significantly better performance compared to the POSIX
+configuration of libgomp. In addition application configurable thread pools
+for each scheduler instance are available in GCC 6.1 or later.
+
+The run-time configuration of libgomp is done via environment variables
+documented in the `libgomp
+manual <https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libgomp/>`_. The environment variables are evaluated in a constructor function
+which executes in the context of the first initialization task before the
+actual initialization task function is called (just like a global C++
+constructor). To set application specific values, a higher priority
+constructor function must be used to set up the environment variables.
+.. code:: c
+
+ #include <stdlib.h>
+ void __attribute__((constructor(1000))) config_libgomp( void )
+ {
+ setenv( "OMP_DISPLAY_ENV", "VERBOSE", 1 );
+ setenv( "GOMP_SPINCOUNT", "30000", 1 );
+ setenv( "GOMP_RTEMS_THREAD_POOLS", "1$2@SCHD", 1 );
+ }
+
+The environment variable ``GOMP_RTEMS_THREAD_POOLS`` is RTEMS-specific. It
+determines the thread pools for each scheduler instance. The format for``GOMP_RTEMS_THREAD_POOLS`` is a list of optional``<thread-pool-count>[$<priority>]@<scheduler-name>`` configurations
+separated by ``:`` where:
+
+- ``<thread-pool-count>`` is the thread pool count for this scheduler
+ instance.
+
+- ``$<priority>`` is an optional priority for the worker threads of a
+ thread pool according to ``pthread_setschedparam``. In case a priority
+ value is omitted, then a worker thread will inherit the priority of the OpenMP
+ master thread that created it. The priority of the worker thread is not
+ changed by libgomp after creation, even if a new OpenMP master thread using the
+ worker has a different priority.
+
+- ``@<scheduler-name>`` is the scheduler instance name according to the
+ RTEMS application configuration.
+
+In case no thread pool configuration is specified for a scheduler instance,
+then each OpenMP master thread of this scheduler instance will use its own
+dynamically allocated thread pool. To limit the worker thread count of the
+thread pools, each OpenMP master thread must call ``omp_set_num_threads``.
+
+Lets suppose we have three scheduler instances ``IO``, ``WRK0``, and``WRK1`` with ``GOMP_RTEMS_THREAD_POOLS`` set to``"1@WRK0:3$4@WRK1"``. Then there are no thread pool restrictions for
+scheduler instance ``IO``. In the scheduler instance ``WRK0`` there is
+one thread pool available. Since no priority is specified for this scheduler
+instance, the worker thread inherits the priority of the OpenMP master thread
+that created it. In the scheduler instance ``WRK1`` there are three thread
+pools available and their worker threads run at priority four.
+
+Thread Dispatch Details
+-----------------------
+
+This section gives background information to developers interested in the
+interrupt latencies introduced by thread dispatching. A thread dispatch
+consists of all work which must be done to stop the currently executing thread
+on a processor and hand over this processor to an heir thread.
+
+On SMP systems, scheduling decisions on one processor must be propagated to
+other processors through inter-processor interrupts. So, a thread dispatch
+which must be carried out on another processor happens not instantaneous. Thus
+several thread dispatch requests might be in the air and it is possible that
+some of them may be out of date before the corresponding processor has time to
+deal with them. The thread dispatch mechanism uses three per-processor
+variables,
+
+- the executing thread,
+
+- the heir thread, and
+
+- an boolean flag indicating if a thread dispatch is necessary or not.
+
+Updates of the heir thread and the thread dispatch necessary indicator are
+synchronized via explicit memory barriers without the use of locks. A thread
+can be an heir thread on at most one processor in the system. The thread context
+is protected by a TTAS lock embedded in the context to ensure that it is used
+on at most one processor at a time. The thread post-switch actions use a
+per-processor lock. This implementation turned out to be quite efficient and
+no lock contention was observed in the test suite.
+
+The current implementation of thread dispatching has some implications with
+respect to the interrupt latency. It is crucial to preserve the system
+invariant that a thread can execute on at most one processor in the system at a
+time. This is accomplished with a boolean indicator in the thread context.
+The processor architecture specific context switch code will mark that a thread
+context is no longer executing and waits that the heir context stopped
+execution before it restores the heir context and resumes execution of the heir
+thread (the boolean indicator is basically a TTAS lock). So, there is one
+point in time in which a processor is without a thread. This is essential to
+avoid cyclic dependencies in case multiple threads migrate at once. Otherwise
+some supervising entity is necessary to prevent deadlocks. Such a global
+supervisor would lead to scalability problems so this approach is not used.
+Currently the context switch is performed with interrupts disabled. Thus in
+case the heir thread is currently executing on another processor, the time of
+disabled interrupts is prolonged since one processor has to wait for another
+processor to make progress.
+
+It is difficult to avoid this issue with the interrupt latency since interrupts
+normally store the context of the interrupted thread on its stack. In case a
+thread is marked as not executing, we must not use its thread stack to store
+such an interrupt context. We cannot use the heir stack before it stopped
+execution on another processor. If we enable interrupts during this
+transition, then we have to provide an alternative thread independent stack for
+interrupts in this time frame. This issue needs further investigation.
+
+The problematic situation occurs in case we have a thread which executes with
+thread dispatching disabled and should execute on another processor (e.g. it is
+an heir thread on another processor). In this case the interrupts on this
+other processor are disabled until the thread enables thread dispatching and
+starts the thread dispatch sequence. The scheduler (an exception is the
+scheduler with thread processor affinity support) tries to avoid such a
+situation and checks if a new scheduled thread already executes on a processor.
+In case the assigned processor differs from the processor on which the thread
+already executes and this processor is a member of the processor set managed by
+this scheduler instance, it will reassign the processors to keep the already
+executing thread in place. Therefore normal scheduler requests will not lead
+to such a situation. Explicit thread migration requests, however, can lead to
+this situation. Explicit thread migrations may occur due to the scheduler
+helping protocol or explicit scheduler instance changes. The situation can
+also be provoked by interrupts which suspend and resume threads multiple times
+and produce stale asynchronous thread dispatch requests in the system.
+
+Operations
+==========
+
+Setting Affinity to a Single Processor
+--------------------------------------
+
+On some embedded applications targeting SMP systems, it may be beneficial to
+lock individual tasks to specific processors. In this way, one can designate a
+processor for I/O tasks, another for computation, etc.. The following
+illustrates the code sequence necessary to assign a task an affinity for
+processor with index ``processor_index``.
+.. code:: c
+
+ #include <rtems.h>
+ #include <assert.h>
+ void pin_to_processor(rtems_id task_id, int processor_index)
+ {
+ rtems_status_code sc;
+ cpu_set_t cpuset;
+ CPU_ZERO(&cpuset);
+ CPU_SET(processor_index, &cpuset);
+ sc = rtems_task_set_affinity(task_id, sizeof(cpuset), &cpuset);
+ assert(sc == RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL);
+ }
+
+It is important to note that the ``cpuset`` is not validated until the``rtems_task_set_affinity`` call is made. At that point,
+it is validated against the current system configuration.
+
+Directives
+==========
+
+This section details the symmetric multiprocessing services. A subsection
+is dedicated to each of these services and describes the calling sequence,
+related constants, usage, and status codes.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_get_processor_count
+
+GET_PROCESSOR_COUNT - Get processor count
+-----------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ uint32_t rtems_get_processor_count(void);
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+The count of processors in the system.
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+On uni-processor configurations a value of one will be returned.
+
+On SMP configurations this returns the value of a global variable set during
+system initialization to indicate the count of utilized processors. The
+processor count depends on the physically or virtually available processors and
+application configuration. The value will always be less than or equal to the
+maximum count of application configured processors.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_get_current_processor
+
+GET_CURRENT_PROCESSOR - Get current processor index
+---------------------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ uint32_t rtems_get_current_processor(void);
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+The index of the current processor.
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+On uni-processor configurations a value of zero will be returned.
+
+On SMP configurations an architecture specific method is used to obtain the
+index of the current processor in the system. The set of processor indices is
+the range of integers starting with zero up to the processor count minus one.
+
+Outside of sections with disabled thread dispatching the current processor
+index may change after every instruction since the thread may migrate from one
+processor to another. Sections with disabled interrupts are sections with
+thread dispatching disabled.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_scheduler_ident
+
+
+SCHEDULER_IDENT - Get ID of a scheduler
+---------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ rtems_status_code rtems_scheduler_ident(
+ rtems_name name,
+ rtems_id \*id
+ );
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+``RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL`` - successful operation
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS`` - ``id`` is NULL
+``RTEMS_INVALID_NAME`` - invalid scheduler name
+``RTEMS_UNSATISFIED`` - - a scheduler with this name exists, but
+the processor set of this scheduler is empty
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+Identifies a scheduler by its name. The scheduler name is determined by the
+scheduler configuration. See `Configuring a System`_.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_scheduler_get_processor_set
+
+SCHEDULER_GET_PROCESSOR_SET - Get processor set of a scheduler
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ rtems_status_code rtems_scheduler_get_processor_set(
+ rtems_id scheduler_id,
+ size_t cpusetsize,
+ cpu_set_t \*cpuset
+ );
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+``RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL`` - successful operation
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS`` - ``cpuset`` is NULL
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ID`` - invalid scheduler id
+``RTEMS_INVALID_NUMBER`` - the affinity set buffer is too small for
+set of processors owned by the scheduler
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+Returns the processor set owned by the scheduler in ``cpuset``. A set bit
+in the processor set means that this processor is owned by the scheduler and a
+cleared bit means the opposite.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_task_get_scheduler
+
+TASK_GET_SCHEDULER - Get scheduler of a task
+--------------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ rtems_status_code rtems_task_get_scheduler(
+ rtems_id task_id,
+ rtems_id \*scheduler_id
+ );
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+``RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL`` - successful operation
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS`` - ``scheduler_id`` is NULL
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ID`` - invalid task id
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+Returns the scheduler identifier of a task identified by ``task_id`` in``scheduler_id``.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_task_set_scheduler
+
+
+TASK_SET_SCHEDULER - Set scheduler of a task
+--------------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ rtems_status_code rtems_task_set_scheduler(
+ rtems_id task_id,
+ rtems_id scheduler_id
+ );
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+``RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL`` - successful operation
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ID`` - invalid task or scheduler id
+``RTEMS_INCORRECT_STATE`` - the task is in the wrong state to
+perform a scheduler change
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+Sets the scheduler of a task identified by ``task_id`` to the scheduler
+identified by ``scheduler_id``. The scheduler of a task is initialized to
+the scheduler of the task that created it.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+**EXAMPLE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ #include <rtems.h>
+ #include <assert.h>
+ void task(rtems_task_argument arg);
+ void example(void)
+ {
+ rtems_status_code sc;
+ rtems_id task_id;
+ rtems_id scheduler_id;
+ rtems_name scheduler_name;
+ scheduler_name = rtems_build_name('W', 'O', 'R', 'K');
+ sc = rtems_scheduler_ident(scheduler_name, &scheduler_id);
+ assert(sc == RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL);
+ sc = rtems_task_create(
+ rtems_build_name('T', 'A', 'S', 'K'),
+ 1,
+ RTEMS_MINIMUM_STACK_SIZE,
+ RTEMS_DEFAULT_MODES,
+ RTEMS_DEFAULT_ATTRIBUTES,
+ &task_id
+ );
+ assert(sc == RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL);
+ sc = rtems_task_set_scheduler(task_id, scheduler_id);
+ assert(sc == RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL);
+ sc = rtems_task_start(task_id, task, 0);
+ assert(sc == RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL);
+ }
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_task_get_affinity
+
+TASK_GET_AFFINITY - Get task processor affinity
+-----------------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ rtems_status_code rtems_task_get_affinity(
+ rtems_id id,
+ size_t cpusetsize,
+ cpu_set_t \*cpuset
+ );
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+``RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL`` - successful operation
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS`` - ``cpuset`` is NULL
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ID`` - invalid task id
+``RTEMS_INVALID_NUMBER`` - the affinity set buffer is too small for
+the current processor affinity set of the task
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+Returns the current processor affinity set of the task in ``cpuset``. A set
+bit in the affinity set means that the task can execute on this processor and a
+cleared bit means the opposite.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+None.
+
+.. COMMENT: rtems_task_set_affinity
+
+TASK_SET_AFFINITY - Set task processor affinity
+-----------------------------------------------
+
+**CALLING SEQUENCE:**
+
+.. code:: c
+
+ rtems_status_code rtems_task_set_affinity(
+ rtems_id id,
+ size_t cpusetsize,
+ const cpu_set_t \*cpuset
+ );
+
+**DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:**
+
+``RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL`` - successful operation
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS`` - ``cpuset`` is NULL
+``RTEMS_INVALID_ID`` - invalid task id
+``RTEMS_INVALID_NUMBER`` - invalid processor affinity set
+
+**DESCRIPTION:**
+
+Sets the processor affinity set for the task specified by ``cpuset``. A set
+bit in the affinity set means that the task can execute on this processor and a
+cleared bit means the opposite.
+
+**NOTES:**
+
+This function will not change the scheduler of the task. The intersection of
+the processor affinity set and the set of processors owned by the scheduler of
+the task must be non-empty. It is not an error if the processor affinity set
+contains processors that are not part of the set of processors owned by the
+scheduler instance of the task. A task will simply not run under normal
+circumstances on these processors since the scheduler ignores them. Some
+locking protocols may temporarily use processors that are not included in the
+processor affinity set of the task. It is also not an error if the processor
+affinity set contains processors that are not part of the system.
+
+.. COMMENT: COPYRIGHT (c) 2011,2015
+
+.. COMMENT: Aeroflex Gaisler AB
+
+.. COMMENT: All rights reserved.
+