.TH REALTIME 3 
.EQ
delim $$
.EN
.SH NAME
realtime \- real time scheduling
.SH SYNOPSIS
.EX
.ta 4n +11n +7
.B bind -a #R /dev
.ift .sp 0.5
.ifn .sp
/dev/realtime/clone
/dev/realtime/debug
/dev/realtime/log
/dev/realtime/nblog
/dev/realtime/resources
/dev/realtime/task/0
/dev/realtime/task/1
/dev/realtime/task/...
/dev/realtime/time
.sp
#include "realtime.h"
.ift .sp 0.5
.ifn .sp
enum SEvent {
	SAdmit,	/* new proc arrives*/
	SRelease,	/* released, but not yet scheduled */
	SRun,	/* one of this task's procs started running */
	SPreempt,	/* the running task was preempted */
	SBlock,	/* the last of the runnable procs in a task blocked */
	SResume,	/* task was scheduled after blocking */
	SDeadline,	/* proc's deadline (reported ahead of time) */
	SYield,	/* proc reached voluntary early deadline */
	SSlice,	/* slice exhausted */
	SExpel,	/* proc was expelled */
	SResack,	/* acquire resource */
	SResrel,	/* release resource */
};
typedef enum SEvent SEvent;
typedef vlong Time;
typedef struct Schedevent Schedevent;
.ift .sp 0.5
.ifn .sp
struct Schedevent {
	ushort	tid;	/* Task ID */
	SEvent	etype;	/* Event type */
	Time	ts;	/* Event time */
};
.EE
.SH DESCRIPTION
The Plan 9 real-time scheduler allows mixing real-time processes and best-effort
processes on a single system.  The scheduler is intended for real-time loads well
under 100% CPU utilization with minimum periods in the order of a hundred thousand
instruction times.  The precision of the scheduler depends on the precision of the
machine's programmable real-time clock.
.PP
The unit of real-time scheduling is a
.BR task .
A task can contain zero or more processes.  The processes in a task
share a common period, deadline and CPU allocation.  Tasks allow
cooperating processes to collaborate to achieve a common deadline, for
instance, processes receiving, decompressing and displaying video in a
pipeline can share a single task.
.PP
Tasks are scheduled using Earliest-Deadline First (EDF).  Each task
has three primary scheduling parameters, a period $T$, a deadline $D$
and a cost $C$, expressed in nanoseconds (but converted internally to
a machine- and architecture-dependent unit called
.IR tick ).
Every $T$ nanoseconds, the task is
.I released
— i.e., it becomes schedulable — and it received a
.I slice
of $C$ nsec.
When the task is released, its
.I "release time"
$r$ is set to the current time.
The task's
.I "absolute deadline"
$d$ is set to $r + D$.
(Note the use of capital letters to indicate intervals and lower-case
letters to indicate `points in time'.)
Between release and deadline the task must be scheduled often enough
to be able to consume its slice of $C$ nsec of CPU time.
So, to be schedulable, $C <= D <= T$ must hold.
If $D < T$, tasks are not schedulable (runnable) between their
deadline and the next release.
Tasks are
.I released
from the moment of release until their deadline or their slice runs
out, whichever happens first.  Additionally, tasks can voluntarily
declare the slice for the current period empty, allowing other
real-time tasks or best-effort tasks the CPU time remaining in their
slice.
.PP
Before they are released for the first time, tasks have to be
.IR admitted
into the system.  Before admission, a test is conducted to determine
whether the task, plus the already admitted tasks can all meet their
deadlines, given their scheduling parameters.  When a task changes its
scheduling parameters, it is temporarily
.I expelled
and will be readmitted if the new scheduling parameters allow all
tasks to continue to meet their deadlines.
.PP
The EDF scheduler schedules the released task with the earliest
deadline.  When a task is released it can, therefore, preempt a task
that has a later deadline, but was released earlier.
.PP
Real-time tasks sharing resources, however, may need to be prevented
from preempting each other.  They can do this by declaring a shared
resource.  The scheduler will not preempt one task with another that
shares a common resource.  To do this, the scheduler needs to know the
names of the sharable resources used by each of the tasks, the amount
of time the resources are used, and the way in which resource usage is
nested.
.PP
Resource usage must be strictly nested; i.e., it is legal for a task to
first to acquire resource $A$, then to acquire resource $B$, to
release $B$ again and finally to release $A$.  It is also legal for it
to acquire and release $A$ before acquiring and releasing $B$.  But
it is not legal to acquire $A$, acquire $B$, release $A$ and release $B$
in that order.
.PP
During the admission test, information about resource sharing is used
to calculate secondary deadlines for each task, called
.IR "inherited deadlines" ,
$Δ$, which is the minimum of the deadlines $D$ of each of the tasks
that shares a resource currently held by the current task.
.PP
Acquiring a resource will lower the $Δ$ of the task (or keep it the
same); releasing one will increase the $Δ$ (or keep it the same).
.PP
The scheduler allows a released task $T$ to preempt running task $T'$
iff $d < d' ^ D < Δ'$; the first half of the condition says that the
released task's deadline must be earlier, the second implies that the
released task may not share resources with the running one (after all,
if $T'$ had acquired a resource that $T$ uses, its $Δ'$ would, by the
definition of inherited deadlines, be less than or equal to $D$).
.PP
The admission test takes these limitations into account.  Note that,
in practice, tasks rarely share resources.
.PP
Normally, tasks can block (when all their processes are blocked on
system calls) during their release.  The time spent blocking is not
accounted against the current slice, but, since the scheduler has no
control over the time spent blocking, there are no guarantees that the
deadline will be made if a task blocks during its release.  Whether or
not tasks actually block, they will normally complete the work to be
done in a period (slightly) before the slice runs out — and before
the deadline.  To tell the scheduler that they no longer require the
CPU until the next release, tasks can
.I yield
(see below).
.PP
Tasks can also run in another mode where blocking automatically
implies immediate yielding.  This mode truly guarantees that deadlines
will be made, but programmers must know more about the (blocking)
nature of the system calls used in order to use this mode.
.sp
.LP
The real-time scheduler is controlled through the
.B #R
file system, normally bound to
.BR /dev .
Opening
.B /dev/realtime/clone
for writing (and reading, if desired), causes a new task to be created in the
non-admitted (expelled) state.  The new task will be represented by a file in
the
.B /dev/realtime/task
directory whose name $n$ is the task's number.
The file descriptor resulting from opening
.B /dev/realtime/clone
provides the equivalent functionality as that resulting from opening
.BI /dev/realtime/task/ n
except for the initial creation of a new task when opening the
.B clone
file.  The task file may also be opened read-only.
.PP
The task's parameters are set or modified by writing one of these files and they
can be examined by reading it.
A parameter is presented in the form
\f2name\fP=\f2value\fP, \f2name\fP+=\f2value\fP, or \f2name\fP-=\f2value\fP.
A command is presented in the form
.IR commandname .
Parameters and commands are separated by white space; quoting conventions apply
(see
.IR quote (2)).
The settable parameters are
.TP
.B T
Sets the period.  The value must be given as a number with or without decimal point
and directly followed (no white space) by one of
.I s
for seconds,
.I ms
for milliseconds,
.I µs
or
.I us
for microseconds,
.I ns
or
nothing
for nanoseconds.  The
.B +=
operator adds to the period already set, the
.B -=
operator subtracts from it.
.TP
.B D
Sets the deadline.  Value syntax and operators as above.
.TP
.B C
Sets the cost.  Value syntax and operators as above.
.TP
.B resources
Sets the list of resources; resource names must consist of letters, digits, or underscores
and they must not start with a digit.  A resource name may be followed by its cost
(using the same notation of time as in setting the $T$ attribute) and by resources
nested within.  These nested resources are indicated by an open brace '{', a list of
nested resources and a closing brace '}'.  Quoting is usually necessary.
An example of a resource specification is
.ti +2m
.B "resources='a 10ms { b 2ms c 3ms {d} }'
.br
Here, resource $a$ is held for at most 10 ms; during this time, resource $b$ is
acquired and then released within 2 ms.  After releasing $b$, resource $c$ can
be acquired and then resource $d$.  No time is specified for $d$, so its cost
is inherited from its parent: 3 ms.  Resources $d$, $c$ and $a$ must be released
in that order.
.br
.ti +1m
The
.B +=
and
.B -=
operators are not allowed for resources (they must be specified completely every time).
.TP
.B acquire
is a run time command which tells the scheduler that the named resource is being acquired.
The scheduler will adjust the task's $Δ$ accordingly.  It is illegal to acquire a resource
not specified or not to follow the nesting order.  It is legal, however, not to acquire a resource
(and all the ones nested inside) that may legally be acquired.
The
.B +=
and
.B -=
operators do not apply.
.TP
.B procs
Sets, adds to, or subtracts from the process membership of a task.  Processes
are identified by their
.I pid
or the special value
.B self
identifying the process writing the
.I clone
or
.I task
file.
.TP
.B yieldonblock
When the (integer) value is non-zero, the task is placed in
.I yield-on-block
mode: when all processes in the task are blocked on system calls, the task automatically
declares the current deadline reached and will be released again in the next period.
When the value is zero, the task can block without forfeiting the current release.
However, when the task blocks long, the deadline may be missed.  The default value is zero.
.LP
In addition to these settable attributes, there are a number of attributes
to be read:
.TP
.B n
Number of releases of this task,
.TP
.B m
Number of deadlines missed,
.TP
.B p
Number of times the task was preempted by one with an earlier deadline,
.TP
.B t
Total time used (divide this by
.I n
to get the average time used per period),
.TP
.B c
Aged average time used,
.LP
The commands accepted are
.TP
.B verbose
This is for debugging and causes the progression of the admission test to be displayed.
.TP
.B admit
This initiates an admission test.  If the test fails, the write containing the
.B admit
command will fail.  If the test succeeds the task is admitted and, if it contains
runnable processes, it will be released (almost) immediately.
.TP
.B expel
Expel the task.
.TP
.B remove
Remove the task, the file descriptor will become invalid.
.TP
.B release
Release the last resource acquired.  There is no attribute.
.TP
.B yield
Gives up the processor until the next release.
.LP
.sp
.B /dev/realtime/debug
prints debugging information about the task queues maintained by the scheduler.
This file will go away.
.PP
.B /dev/realtime/log
and
.B /dev/realtime/nblog
are files used by real-time monitoring processes such as
.B rtstats
(see
.IR rtstats (1)).
Reading them produces a stream of
.B Schedevent
structures in the machine representation.  These events are
nearly ordered by Time (nanoseconds since boot); some events can
be reported earlier or later than they occur.
.I Tid
corresponds to the file name in the directory
.BR /dev/realtime/task ,
.I etype
is one of the events of
.I SEvent
as explained in
.BR /sys/src/9/port/devrealtime.h ,
and
.I ts
is the time at which the event occurred (or will occur).
.B Nblog
is a non-blocking version that returns zero bytes each time there is
nothing left to read.
.PP
.B /dev/realtime/resources
is a read-only file listing the resources declared by the current set of tasks.
.PP
.B /dev/realtime/time
returns the number of nanoseconds since boot, the number of ticks since boot and
.IR fasthz ,
the number of clock ticks per second, a billion times the ratio between the other two numbers.
Each number is returned as a binary
.I vlong
in architecture-dependent representation.
.SH EXAMPLE
.EX
.ta 4n +4n +4n +4n +4n +4n +4n
char *clonedev = "#R/realtime/clone";

void
processvideo(){
	int fd;

	if ((fd = open(clonedev, ORDWR)) < 0) 
		sysfatal("%s: %r", clonedev);
	if (fprint(fd, "T=33ms D=20ms C=8ms procs=self admit") < 0)
		sysfatal("%s: admit: %r", clonedev);
	for (;;){
		processframe();
		if (fprint(fd, "yield") < 0)
			sysfatal("%s: yield: %r", clonedev);
	}
	if (fprint(fd, "remove") < 0)
		sysfatal("%s: remove: %r", clonedev);
	close(fd);
}
.EE
.SH "SEE ALSO
.IR rtstats (1)
.SH FILES
.B /sys/src/cmd/rtstats/edfproc.c
as an example of using the scheduler for a trivial test run.
.B /sys/src/cmd/rtstats/resproc.c
as an example of using resources.
.SH SOURCE
.B /sys/src/9/port/devrealtime.c
.br
.B /sys/src/9/port/edf.c
.SH BUGS
The admission test does not take multiprocessors into account.  The total
real-time load cannot exceed a single-\s-2CPU\s0 load.