Jamie Smith / AccurateWaiter

AccurateWaiter allows threaded applications to have threads wait for a precise amount of time, without sending the CPU into a permanent spinlock.

Dependents:   AccurateWaiter-Test

AccurateWaiter

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AccurateWaiter allows threaded applications to have threads wait for a precise amount of time, without sending the CPU into a permanent spinlock.

In standard Mbed OS, certain types of threaded applications are limited by the precision of ThisThread::sleep_for(), which only allows sleeping for a whole number of milliseconds. This limitation comes from the underlying RTX RTOS, which uses a 1 ms scheduling interrupt.

What a lot of people don't know is that there is actually a way around this limitation, using the RTOS's EventFlags objects. Unlike most other RTOS objects, EventFlags are usable from interrupts. By configuring the Mbed us ticker interrupt to set EventFlags, a waiting thread can be woken immediately after an exact number of ticks on the us ticker.

The result is something that combines the best features of wait_us() and ThisThread::sleep_for(). Other threads may run during the wait period (like ThisThread::sleep_for()), but the wait time can be specified to the microsecond (like wait_us()). The only downside is a bit more overhead when starting the wait operation (to trigger the timer interrupt).

I tested this code on my NUCLEO_F429ZI board, and found that it was able to handle any time duration from 1us-1s accurately with exactly 14us of delay between the set time and the time the wait function returns. Overhead of calling the wait function also is around the 15-25us range.

Note 1: Since it uses the Mbed us ticker, this class allows waiting for >250,000 years before rollover.

Note 2: Each AccurateWaiter object may only be safely used by one thread at a time.

Initial commit