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<concept id="GUID-2700AAC8-A034-5E7D-B0E0-26B49E68BB18" xml:lang="en"><title>Personality

Layer for Real Time Applications</title><shortdesc>A base port can add a software layer called a personality layer

to the Kernel to provide an emulation of a real time operating system (RTOS)</shortdesc><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>

<p>. You can provide a personality layer so that a phone can run existing

protocol stacks, for example, mobile telephony signalling stacks, or Bluetooth

stacks, on the same CPU that runs the Symbian platform applications. </p>

<p>Such protocol stacks, often referred to as Real Time Applications (RTA),

almost always run on an RTOS, and the aim of the personality layer is to provide

the same API as the RTOS, or at least as much of it as is required by the

RTA. The RTA can then run, using the Kernel Architecture 2 <xref href="GUID-5B1D8D9C-90EF-5FCC-8D7D-01B13D6C2E68.dita">Nanokernel</xref> layer

as the underlying real time kernel. </p>

<p>The following diagram illustrates the point simply. </p>

<fig id="GUID-AA5502A3-37BE-5A73-A8D9-1B18DDCC8C96">

</fig>

<p>There is sample code at <filepath>...\e32\personality\...</filepath> that

you should refer to while reading this. </p>

<section id="GUID-D1217729-E0E4-5A02-A02F-524EA9F1D679"><title>RTOS environment

features</title> <p>As a basis for emulating an RTOS, the RTOS is assumed

to provide the following features: </p> <ul>

<li id="GUID-107CEB20-80DA-5AF8-A116-C5FA5E437993"><p>Threads </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-496701DC-E711-5509-B593-5B5A51A7DFC2"><p>Thread synchronisation/communication </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-5ADDB09E-7528-50E0-8661-C64C91AF32CA"><p>Thread scheduling following

a hardware interrupt </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-4856FE5E-95E6-5455-B226-9314071F948E"><p>Timer management functionality </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-C721F13B-14F9-5E01-9721-19E9475A421B"><p>Memory management. </p> </li>

</ul> <p><b>Threads</b> </p> <p>Threads

are independent units of execution, usually scheduled on a strict highest-priority-first

basis. There are generally a fixed number of priorities. Round robin scheduling

of equal priority threads may be available but is usually not used in real

time applications. Dynamic creation and destruction of threads may or may

not be possible. </p> <p><b>Thread

synchronisation/communication</b> </p> <p>Typical examples of such thread

synchronisation and communication mechanisms are semaphores, message queues

and event flags. </p> <p>There is wide variation between systems as to which

primitives are provided and what features they support. Again, dynamic creation

and destruction of such synchronisation and communication objects may or may

not be supported. Mutual exclusion protection is often achieved by simply

disabling interrupts, or occasionally by disabling rescheduling. </p> <p><b>Thread scheduling following a hardware interrupt</b> </p> <p>This is usually

achieved by allowing interrupt service routines (ISRs) to make system calls

which perform operations such as signalling a semaphore, posting a message

to a queue or setting event flags, which would cause a thread waiting on the

semaphore, message queue or event flag to run. </p> <p>Some systems don't

allow ISRs to perform these operations directly but require them to queue

some kind of deferred function call. This is a function which runs at a lower

priority than hardware interrupts (i.e. with interrupts enabled) but at a

higher priority than any thread - for example a Nucleus Plus HISR. The deferred

function call then performs the operation which causes thread rescheduling. </p> <p><b>Timer management functionality</b> </p> <p>A timer management function

is usually also provided, allowing several software timers to be driven from

a single hardware timer. On expiry, a software timer may call a supplied timer

handler, post a message to a queue or set an event flag. </p> <p><b>Memory management</b> </p> <p>An RTOS often provides memory management,

usually in the form of fixed size block management as that allows real time

allocation and deallocation. Some RTOSs may also support full variable size

block management. However most RTOSs do not support use of a hardware MMU

and, even if the RTOS supports it (for example OSE does), the real time applications

under consideration do not make use of such support since they are generally

written to run on hardware without an MMU. </p> </section>

</conbody></concept>