Embedded Linux questions

[Alan Dayley]

At 01:02 PM 11/1/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Sounds similar to what I do in game development, though rarely do I need to
>access low level hardware to do task switching. Generally I'd just spawn a
>bunch of threads, one for each task, and use IPC to handle information
>passing. I suppose you could call the code that controls those threads a
>"kernel", though I try to stay away from that word, since it's far too often
>confused with the OS kernel.
>
>I'm doubtful you'll need to do low level task switching -- ever --
>since doing so would be disastrous, and would totally nullify any reason for
>using Linux in the first place. =op

OK.  Perhaps this is something I need to learn better and I have asked the 
wrong question.

- What is the difference between a "task" and a "thread"?  Or, put another 
way, what is the difference between "task switching" and "thread 
switching"?  The way you phrased things seems to indicate a difference, 
that task switching is lower level, if you will, than switching threads.

- What would be the latency for "thread" switching?  Faster than task 
switching?  Are CPU time slices based on threads or tasks?

>Might want to send a few questions to the linux-kernel list about this
>project since they're ear-deep in the kernel's internals daily and would
>know more about these kinds of issues than most of us PLUGer's. =op

Yes, I will do that if I need too.  It is great to keep this conversation 
local for now!  Besides, PLUG-devel needs the traffic.

Alan