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<HTML
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><TITLE
>Semaphores</TITLE
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><H1
><A
NAME="KERNEL-SEMAPHORES">Semaphores</H1
><DIV
CLASS="REFNAMEDIV"
><A
NAME="AEN1330"
></A
><H2
>Name</H2
>cyg_semaphore_init, cyg_semaphore_destroy, cyg_semaphore_wait, cyg_semaphore_timed_wait, cyg_semaphore_post, cyg_semaphore_peek -- Synchronization primitive</DIV
><DIV
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><A
NAME="AEN1338"><H2
>Synopsis</H2
><DIV
CLASS="FUNCSYNOPSIS"
><A
NAME="AEN1339"><P
></P
><TABLE
BORDER="5"
BGCOLOR="#E0E0F0"
WIDTH="70%"
><TR
><TD
><PRE
CLASS="FUNCSYNOPSISINFO"
>#include <cyg/kernel/kapi.h>
</PRE
></TD
></TR
></TABLE
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>void cyg_semaphore_init</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem, cyg_count32 val);</CODE
></P
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>void cyg_semaphore_destroy</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem);</CODE
></P
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>cyg_bool_t cyg_semaphore_wait</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem);</CODE
></P
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>cyg_bool_t cyg_semaphore_timed_wait</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem, cyg_tick_count_t abstime);</CODE
></P
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>cyg_bool_t cyg_semaphore_trywait</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem);</CODE
></P
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>void cyg_semaphore_post</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem);</CODE
></P
><P
><CODE
><CODE
CLASS="FUNCDEF"
>void cyg_semaphore_peek</CODE
>(cyg_sem_t* sem, cyg_count32* val);</CODE
></P
><P
></P
></DIV
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="KERNEL-SEMAPHORES-DESCRIPTION"
></A
><H2
>Description</H2
><P
>Counting semaphores are a <A
HREF="kernel-overview.html#KERNEL-OVERVIEW-SYNCH-PRIMITIVES"
>synchronization
primitive</A
> that allow threads to wait until an event has
occurred. The event may be generated by a producer thread, or by a DSR
in response to a hardware interrupt. Associated with each semaphore is
an integer counter that keeps track of the number of events that have
not yet been processed. If this counter is zero, an attempt by a
consumer thread to wait on the semaphore will block until some other
thread or a DSR posts a new event to the semaphore. If the counter is
greater than zero then an attempt to wait on the semaphore will
consume one event, in other words decrement the counter, and return
immediately. Posting to a semaphore will wake up the first thread that
is currently waiting, which will then resume inside the semaphore wait
operation and decrement the counter again.
</P
><P
>Another use of semaphores is for certain forms of resource management.
The counter would correspond to how many of a certain type of resource
are currently available, with threads waiting on the semaphore to
claim a resource and posting to release the resource again. In
practice <A
HREF="kernel-condition-variables.html"
>condition
variables</A
> are usually much better suited for operations like
this.
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_init</TT
> is used to initialize a
semaphore. It takes two arguments, a pointer to a
<SPAN
CLASS="STRUCTNAME"
>cyg_sem_t</SPAN
> structure and an initial value for
the counter. Note that semaphore operations, unlike some other parts
of the kernel API, use pointers to data structures rather than
handles. This makes it easier to embed semaphores in a larger data
structure. The initial counter value can be any number, zero, positive
or negative, but typically a value of zero is used to indicate that no
events have occurred yet.
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
> is used by a consumer thread
to wait for an event. If the current counter is greater than 0, in
other words if the event has already occurred in the past, then the
counter will be decremented and the call will return immediately.
Otherwise the current thread will be blocked until there is a
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_post</TT
> call.
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_post</TT
> is called when an event has
occurs. This increments the counter and wakes up the first thread
waiting on the semaphore (if any). Usually that thread will then
continue running inside <TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
> and
decrement the counter again. However other scenarioes are possible.
For example the thread calling <TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_post</TT
>
may be running at high priority, some other thread running at medium
priority may be about to call <TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
>
when it next gets a chance to run, and a low priority thread may be
waiting on the semaphore. What will happen is that the current high
priority thread continues running until it is descheduled for some
reason, then the medium priority thread runs and its call to
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
> succeeds immediately, and
later on the low priority thread runs again, discovers a counter value
of 0, and blocks until another event is posted. If there are multiple
threads blocked on a semaphore then the configuration option
<TT
CLASS="VARNAME"
>CYGIMP_KERNEL_SCHED_SORTED_QUEUES</TT
> determines which
one will be woken up by a post operation.
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
> returns a boolean. Normally it
will block until it has successfully decremented the counter, retrying
as necessary, and return success. However the wait operation may be
aborted by a call to <A
HREF="kernel-thread-control.html"
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_thread_release</TT
></A
>,
and <TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
> will then return false.
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_timed_wait</TT
> is a variant of
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
>. It can be used to wait until
either an event has occurred or a number of clock ticks have happened.
The function returns success if the semaphore wait operation
succeeded, or false if the operation timed out or was aborted by
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_thread_release</TT
>. If support for the real-time
clock has been removed from the current configuration then this
function will not be available.
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_trywait</TT
> is another variant which
will always return immediately rather than block, again returning
success or failure.
</P
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_peek</TT
> can be used to get hold of the
current counter value. This function is rarely useful except for
debugging purposes since the counter value may change at any time if
some other thread or a DSR performs a semaphore operation.
</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="REFSECT1"
><A
NAME="KERNEL-SEMAPHORES-CONTEXT"
></A
><H2
>Valid contexts</H2
><P
><TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_init</TT
> is normally called during
initialization but may also be called from thread context.
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_wait</TT
> and
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_timed_wait</TT
> may only be called from
thread context because these operations may block.
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_trywait</TT
>,
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_post</TT
> and
<TT
CLASS="FUNCTION"
>cyg_semaphore_peek</TT
> may be called from thread or
DSR context.
</P
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