[PATCH 1/2] c-user: Add key concept thread queues

[Sebastian Huber]

Update #2556.
---
 c-user/glossary.rst     | 12 +++++++++--
 c-user/key_concepts.rst | 53 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 63 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/c-user/glossary.rst b/c-user/glossary.rst
index c482f08..9c4df99 100644
--- a/c-user/glossary.rst
+++ b/c-user/glossary.rst
@@ -639,10 +639,15 @@ Glossary
 :dfn:`target`
     The system on which the application will ultimately execute.
 
+.. _task:
+
 :dfn:`task`
     A logically complete thread of execution.  It consists normally of a set of
-    registers and a stack.  The terms :dfn:`task` and :dfn:`thread` are synonym
-    in RTEMS.  The scheduler assigns processors to a subset of the ready tasks.
+    registers and a stack.  The scheduler assigns processors to a subset of the
+    ready tasks.  The terms :dfn:`task` and :dfn:`thread` are synonym in RTEMS.
+    The term :dfn:`task` is used throughout the Classic API, however,
+    internally in the operating system implementation and the POSIX API the
+    term :dfn:`thread` is used.
 
 :dfn:`Task Control Block`
     A data structure associated with each task used by RTEMS to manage that
@@ -662,6 +667,9 @@ Glossary
 :dfn:`TCB`
     An acronym for Task Control Block.
 
+:dfn:`thread`
+    See :ref:`task <task>`.
+
 :dfn:`thread dispatch`
     The :dfn:`thread dispatch` transfers control of the processor from the
     currently executing thread to the heir thread of the processor.
diff --git a/c-user/key_concepts.rst b/c-user/key_concepts.rst
index e5c8cfd..26cdaf9 100644
--- a/c-user/key_concepts.rst
+++ b/c-user/key_concepts.rst
@@ -239,6 +239,59 @@ synchronization, while the event manager primarily provides a high performance
 synchronization mechanism.  The signal manager supports only asynchronous
 communication and is typically used for exception handling.
 
+Thread Queues
+=============
+.. index:: thread queues
+
+In case more than one :ref:`thread <task>` may wait on a synchronization
+object, e.g. a semaphore or a message queue, then the waiting threads are added
+to a data structure called the thread queue.  Thread queues are named task wait
+queues in the Classic API.  There are two thread queuing disciplines available
+which define the order of the threads on a particular thread queue.  Threads
+can wait in FIFO or priority order.
+
+In uni-processor configurations, the priority queuing discipline just orders
+the threads according to their current priority and in FIFO order in case of
+equal priorities.  However, in SMP configurations, the situation is a bit more
+difficult due to the support for clustered scheduling.  It makes no sense to
+compare the priority values of two different scheduler instances.  Thus, it is
+impossible to simply use one plain priority queue for threads of different
+clusters.  Two levels of queues can be used as one way to solve the problem.
+The top-level queue provides FIFO ordering and contains priority queues.  Each
+priority queue is associated with a scheduler instance and contains only
+threads of this scheduler instance.  Threads are enqueued in the priority
+queues corresponding to their scheduler instances.  To dequeue a thread, the
+highest priority thread of the first priority queue is selected.  Once this is
+done, the first priority queue is appended to the top-level FIFO queue.  This
+guarantees fairness with respect to the scheduler instances.
+
+Such a two-level queue needs a considerable amount of memory if fast enqueue
+and dequeue operations are desired.  Providing this storage per thread queue
+would waste a lot of memory in typical applications.  Instead, each thread has
+a queue attached which resides in a dedicated memory space independent of other
+memory used for the thread (this approach was borrowed from FreeBSD).  In case
+a thread needs to block, there are two options
+
+* the object already has a queue, then the thread enqueues itself to this
+  already present queue and the queue of the thread is added to a list of free
+  queues for this object, or
+
+* otherwise, the queue of the thread is given to the object and the thread
+  enqueues itself to this queue.
+
+In case the thread is dequeued, there are two options
+
+* the thread is the last thread in the queue, then it removes this queue
+  from the object and reclaims it for its own purpose, or
+
+* otherwise, the thread removes one queue from the free list of the object
+  and reclaims it for its own purpose.
+
+Since there are usually more objects than threads, this actually reduces the
+memory demands.  In addition the objects only contain a pointer to the queue
+structure.  This helps to hide implementation details.  Inter-cluster priority
+queues are available since RTEMS 4.12.
+
 Time
 ====
 .. index:: time
-- 
1.8.4.5