[ECOS] Re: Hard realtime issue in eCos

[Fabian Scheler]

Hello,

> >>One idea that I had was to run the Ethernet driver in polled mode rather
> >>then interrupt mode. This would prevent a network "storm" from affecting
> >>my high priority application. Can this be done?
>
> >It should be theoretically possible.
>
> Does anyone out there know if there is a practical way to do this?

Well, aparently you are facing the typical problem when employing a
communication system with event semantics in a hard real-time
environment. Indeed, it is very practical for real-time system to use
an autonmous, time-triggered communication system the exposes a mere
data sharing semantics. The data is then "polled" from the
communication system by the receiver periodically, not "pushed" to the
receiver.

> 1. I don't do garbage collection in my realtime ISR code. Does the eCos kernel do
> garbage collection in the background?  I don't think so. Even if it did, would
> interrupts be turned off while it did it?

No, it does not.

Ciao, Fabian

--
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss