Book Image

Extreme C

By : Kamran Amini
5 (1)
Book Image

Extreme C

5 (1)
By: Kamran Amini

Overview of this book

There’s a lot more to C than knowing the language syntax. The industry looks for developers with a rigorous, scientific understanding of the principles and practices. Extreme C will teach you to use C’s advanced low-level power to write effective, efficient systems. This intensive, practical guide will help you become an expert C programmer. Building on your existing C knowledge, you will master preprocessor directives, macros, conditional compilation, pointers, and much more. You will gain new insight into algorithm design, functions, and structures. You will discover how C helps you squeeze maximum performance out of critical, resource-constrained applications. C still plays a critical role in 21st-century programming, remaining the core language for precision engineering, aviations, space research, and more. This book shows how C works with Unix, how to implement OO principles in C, and fully covers multi-processing. In Extreme C, Amini encourages you to think, question, apply, and experiment for yourself. The book is essential for anybody who wants to take their C to the next level.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)

Task scheduler unit

As we've said before, all multitasking operating systems are required to have a task scheduler unit, or simply a scheduler unit, in their kernel. In this section, we're going to see how this unit works and how it contributes to the seamless execution of some concurrent tasks.

Some facts regarding the task scheduler unit are listed as follows:

  • The scheduler has a queue for tasks waiting to be executed. Tasks or jobs are simply the pieces of work that should be performed in separate flows of execution.
  • This queue is usually prioritized, with the high-priority tasks being chosen to start first.
  • The processor unit is managed and shared among all the tasks by the task scheduler. When the processor unit is free (no task is using it), the task scheduler must select another task from its queue before letting it use the processor unit. When the task is finished, it releases the processor unit and make it available again, then the task scheduler...