6 years, 6 months ago.

How to tell if an EventQueue is starved?

Great talk on Event Queues, sorry I missed the live feed.

One question that occurred to me, is there any mechanism or method to indicate if an EventQueue is being starved for execution?

The queue.call_every(1000, printf, "called every 1 seconds\n"); call within the example code of the EventQueue reference page got me thinking down this path.

Below is a scenario which would cause timing violation of the "call_every()" which would be useful to be able to detect or be aware of:

Example_EventQueue_Starvation

#include "mbed.h"
#include "mbed_events.h"
#include <stdio.h>

void main_action(){
    // Do something that takes longer than desired call_every time... 
    wait(1.5);      // something like this
    printf("trying to call every 1 second\n");
}

int main() {
    // creates a queue with the default size
    EventQueue queue;

    // events are simple callbacks
    queue.call_every(1000, main_action);

    // events are executed by the dispatch method
    queue.dispatch();
}

Question relating to:

1 Answer

6 years, 6 months ago.

Hello Mark,

I think one method could be to measure the actual interval of event execution. For example as below:

#include "mbed.h"
#include "mbed_events.h"
#include <stdio.h>

Timer   timer;
 
void main_action(){
    int interval = timer.read_ms();
    timer.reset();
    // Do something that takes longer than desired call_every time... 
    wait(1.5);      // something like this
    printf("trying to call every 1 second\r\n");
    printf("but actually called after %d ms\r\n", interval);
}
 
int main() {
    // creates a queue with the default size
    EventQueue queue;
 
    // events are simple callbacks
    queue.call_every(1000, main_action);
    
    timer.start();
 
    // events are executed by the dispatch method
    queue.dispatch();
}

Accepted Answer

Great answer Zoltan, this is the best API we have for checking for starvation. You can also use a LowPowerTimer if you want to make sure the device can enter low-power states, at the cost of losing microsecond accuracy.

In this case, I'm not sure the event queue could provide a better API, and using an external timer would give you more control over what condition you want to check for.

posted by Christopher Haster 04 Jun 2018

Thanks Zoltan and Chris for the thoughts and insights!

posted by Mark Baybutt 05 Jun 2018