readme.txt

Spartan3_virtualplatform_8_1

/* 
 *      README for XMK Application
 *      Last Updated:  02/10/2005
 */

Summary:
========

Kernel with a main controlling shell thread. Can launch 5 other
application threads from the shell through the command line.
 - A linked list example, illustrating buffer memory allocation APIs
 - A semaphore example, illustrating the POSIX semaphore API
 - A producer consumer example, illustrating the message queue API
 - A timer example, illustrating software timer support
 - A gpio example, illustrating I/O support

Applications/Threads/Processes:
===============================

SHELL:

 * Command line shell capable of listing and launching other
application threads. Type "help" at the command line for more
information.

LLIST: 

 * Linked list implementation illustrating block memory allocation
APIs.

SEM:

 * Semaphore example, with two threads using semaphores to
synchronize. Uses two semaphores to rendezvous with created threads.
 * Uses one semaphore as the protection semaphore.

PRODCON:

 * Producer consumer example, using a single blocking message
queue. Producer keeps feeding data to the queue while the receiver
 * tries to fetch the data from the queue. Both producer and consumer
automatically block when the queue gets full.

TIMERTEST:

 * Timer example, illustrating software timers. Different threads
sleep for different amounts of time (specified in some time unit).
 * They also dump the value of the kernel tick at different times.

TICTAC:

 * Simple AI tictac toe. Has 9 levels of recursion in AI computation
loop. Stack requirements might be high accordingly.
 * Main thread launches the tictac thread with a dynamically assigned
stack. Therefore the burden of stack allocation and
 * assignment for each thread can be pushed to the kernel. Stack
parameters passed in pthread_attr_t structure.

GPIO:

 * Sends a set of values to toggle the I/O bits.