Frédéric Desbiens b877305d13 Verified lazy VFP context switching on S32Z280 silicon (#609)
The FVP proved the lazy save and restore path at AR1/M5, but the board had never
run it. Doing so needed one thing the model did not: the FPU has to be turned on.

entry.S opens CPACR for CP10/CP11 and sets FPEXC.EN at EL1, guarded by __ARM_FP.
EL2 already cleared HCPTR.TCP10/TCP11, but both of the EL1 gates read 0 out of
reset, so a floating-point instruction raised an Undefined Instruction exception
before this. tx_thread_vfp_enable() does not help: it sets the per-thread software
flag that makes the context switch save and restore the registers, and never
touches the hardware. Enabling it is the BSP's job. The __ARM_FP guard is what
keeps a soft-float build assemblable, since "vmsr fpexc" is not a valid
instruction for that target at all.

demo_vfp_s32z280.c is the FVP's demo_m5.c test design over the LINFlexD console.
The design is kept deliberately, because the two halves of the VFP context path
need separate provocation: "fp check" holds eight live doubles across
tx_thread_sleep, eight being enough to force the callee-saved D8-D15 bank that a
solicited switch must preserve, while "fp busy" sits at the lowest priority and
never sleeps, so the tick interrupts it mid-computation and exercises the
interrupt half, D0-D15 plus FPSCR. Only these two threads opt in, so the test
also shows that opting in is what does the work.

s32z280_vfp.elf is gated on TX_R52_ENABLE_VFP, as demo_m5.elf is in the FVP
example, since the image is meaningless unless the library was built with a
floating-point ABI.

Also made this example's -Wl,--no-warn-rwx-segments conditional on the compiler
being GNU. #604 did that for the FVP example and this file still carried the
literal, so ld.lld failed the link with "unknown argument". With that fixed the
S32Z280 images build with Arm Toolchain for Embedded too.

Verified on S32Z280 silicon:

    V2 D8-D15 bank preserved across switches   PASS   50 solicited switches
    iterations = 0x000140A8                           82,088 interrupted rounds
    corruptions = 0x00000000
    V3 interrupted FP thread made progress     PASS
    V4 no FP corruption across interrupts      PASS
    filex_ptr = 0xF11EF11E
    V5 VFP flag did not alias filex_ptr        PASS
    PASS lazy VFP context switch verified on silicon

No regression: the soft-float build is warning-free and its image contains no vmsr
at all, confirming the guard elides the block, and the existing demo still reports
100 ticks with 20 preemptions on the board. Both S32Z280 images also build with
Arm Toolchain for Embedded 22.1.0, the hard-float VFP image included. No FVP file
is touched.

Assisted-by: Claude Code (Opus 5) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 17:07:36 -04:00
2024-02-27 15:20:47 +08:00
2026-06-30 17:31:42 -04:00

Eclipse ThreadX RTOS

This advanced real-time operating system (RTOS) is designed specifically for deeply embedded applications. Among the multiple benefits it provides are advanced scheduling facilities, message passing, interrupt management, and messaging services. Eclipse ThreadX RTOS has many advanced features, including picokernel architecture, preemption threshold, event chaining, and a rich set of system services.

Here are the key features and modules of ThreadX:

ThreadX Key Features

Getting Started

Eclipse ThreadX has been integrated to the semiconductor's SDKs and development environment. You can develop using the tools of choice from STMicroelectronics, NXP, Renesas and Microchip.

We also provide getting started guide and samples using development boards from semiconductors you can build and test with.

See Overview of Eclipse ThreadX RTOS for the high-level overview.

Repository Structure and Usage

Directory layout

.
├── cmake                        # CMakelist files for building the project
├── common                       # Core ThreadX files
├── common_modules               # Core ThreadX module files
├── common_smp                   # Core ThreadX SMP files
├── docs                         # Documentation supplements
├── ports                        # Architecture and compiler specific files. See below for directory breakdown
│   ├── cortex_m7
│   │   ├── iar                  # Example IAR compiler sample project
│   │   │   ├── example build    # IAR workspace and sample project files
│   │   │   ├── inc              # tx_port.h for this architecture
│   │   │   └── src              # Source files for this architecture
│   │   ├── ac6                  # Example ac6/Keil sample project
│   │   ├── gnu                  # Example gnu sample project
│   │   └── ...
│   └── ...
├── ports_modules                # Architecture and compiler specific files for threadX modules
├── ports_smp                    # Architecture and compiler specific files for threadX SMP
├── samples                      # demo_threadx.c
└── utility                      # Test cases and utilities

Branches & Releases

The master branch has the most recent code with all new features and bug fixes. It does not represent the latest General Availability (GA) release of the library. Each official release (preview or GA) will be tagged to mark the commit and push it into the Github releases tab, e.g. v6.2-rel.

When you see xx-xx-xxxx, 6.x or x.x in function header, this means the file is not officially released yet. They will be updated in the next release. See example below.

/**************************************************************************/
/*                                                                        */
/*  FUNCTION                                               RELEASE        */
/*                                                                        */
/*    _tx_initialize_low_level                          Cortex-M23/GNU    */
/*                                                           6.x          */
/*  AUTHOR                                                                */
/*                                                                        */
/*    Scott Larson, Microsoft Corporation                                 */
/*                                                                        */
/*  DESCRIPTION                                                           */
/*                                                                        */
/*    This function is responsible for any low-level processor            */
/*    initialization, including setting up interrupt vectors, setting     */
/*    up a periodic timer interrupt source, saving the system stack       */
/*    pointer for use in ISR processing later, and finding the first      */
/*    available RAM memory address for tx_application_define.             */
/*                                                                        */
/*  INPUT                                                                 */
/*                                                                        */
/*    None                                                                */
/*                                                                        */
/*  OUTPUT                                                                */
/*                                                                        */
/*    None                                                                */
/*                                                                        */
/*  CALLS                                                                 */
/*                                                                        */
/*    None                                                                */
/*                                                                        */
/*  CALLED BY                                                             */
/*                                                                        */
/*    _tx_initialize_kernel_enter           ThreadX entry function        */
/*                                                                        */
/*  RELEASE HISTORY                                                       */
/*                                                                        */
/*    DATE              NAME                      DESCRIPTION             */
/*                                                                        */
/*  09-30-2020      Scott Larson            Initial Version 6.1           */
/*  xx-xx-xxxx      Scott Larson            Include tx_user.h,            */
/*                                            resulting in version 6.x    */
/*                                                                        */
/**************************************************************************/

Supported Architecture Ports

ThreadX

arc_em      cortex_a12        cortex_m0     cortex_r4
arc_hs      cortex_a15        cortex_m23    cortex_r5
arm11       cortex_a17        cortex_m3     cortex_r7
arm9        cortex_a34        cortex_m33
c667x       cortex_a35        cortex_m4
linux       cortex_a5         cortex_m55
risc-v32    cortex_a53        cortex_m7
rxv1        cortex_a55        cortex_m85
rxv2        cortex_a57
rxv3        cortex_a5x
win32       cortex_a65
xtensa      cortex_a65ae
            cortex_a7
            cortex_a72
            cortex_a73
            cortex_a75
            cortex_a76
            cortex_a76ae
            cortex_a77
            cortex_a8
            cortex_a9

ThreadX Modules

Eclipse ThreadX Modules component provides an infrastructure for applications to dynamically load modules that are built separately from the resident portion of the application.

cortex_a35
cortex_a35_smp
cortex_a7
cortex_m0+
cortex_m23
cortex_m3
cortex_m33
cortex_m4
cortex_m7
cortex_r4
rxv2

ThreadX SMP

Eclipse ThreadX SMP is a high-performance real-time SMP kernel designed specifically for embedded applications.

arc_hs_smp
cortex_a34_smp
cortex_a35_smp
cortex_a53_smp
cortex_a55_smp
cortex_a57_smp
cortex_a5x_smp
cortex_a5_smp
cortex_a65ae_smp
cortex_a65_smp
cortex_a72_smp
cortex_a73_smp
cortex_a75_smp
cortex_a76ae_smp
cortex_a76_smp
cortex_a77_smp
cortex_a78_smp
cortex_a7_smp
cortex_a9_smp
linux

Adaptation layer for ThreadX

ThreadX is an advanced real-time operating system (RTOS) designed specifically for deeply embedded applications. To help ease application migration to ThreadX RTOS, Eclipse ThreadX provides adaption layers for various legacy RTOS APIs (FreeRTOS, POSIX, OSEK, etc.).

Component dependencies

The main components of ThreadX RTOS are each provided in their own repository, but there are dependencies between them, as shown in the following graph. This is important to understand when setting up your builds.

dependency graph

You will have to take the dependency graph above into account when building anything other than ThreadX itself.

Building and using the library

Instruction for building the ThreadX as static library using Arm GNU Toolchain and CMake. If you are using toolchain and IDE from semiconductor, you might follow its own instructions to use ThreadX RTOS components as explained in the Getting Started section.

  1. Install the following tools:

  2. Cloning the repo

    $ git clone https://github.com/eclipse-threadx/threadx.git
    
  3. Define the features and addons you need in tx_user.h and build together with the component source code. You can refer to tx_user_sample.h as an example.

  4. Building as a static library

    Each component of ThreadX RTOS comes with a composable CMake-based build system that supports many different MCUs and host systems. Integrating any of these components into your device app code is as simple as adding a git submodule and then including it in your build using the CMake add_subdirectory().

    While the typical usage pattern is to include ThreadX into your device code source tree to be built & linked with your code, you can compile this project as a standalone static library to confirm your build is set up correctly.

    An example of building the library for Cortex-M4:

    $ cmake -Bbuild -GNinja -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/cortex_m4.cmake .
    
    $ cmake --build ./build
    

Licensing

License terms for using Eclipse ThreadX are defined in the LICENSE.txt file of this repo. Please refer to this file for all definitive licensing information for all content, incl. the history of this repo.

Resources

The following are references to additional ThreadX RTOS resources:

You can also check previous questions or ask new ones on StackOverflow using the threadx-rtos and threadx tags.

Security

Eclipse ThreadX provides OEMs with components to secure communication and to create code and data isolation using underlying MCU/MPU hardware protection mechanisms. It is ultimately the responsibility of the device builder to ensure the device fully meets the evolving security requirements associated with its specific use case.

Contribution

Please follow the instructions provided in the CONTRIBUTING.md for the corresponding repository.

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