Talon 5400 Evaluation Version [Download]
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Overview of the Talon 5400 Operating System

Realtime System	Uniprocessor System	Multiprogrammed System	Multithreaded System
TALON 5400 is a realtime operating system which supports scheduling of program entities executing in parallel in such a way that deadlines are met and application programs respond to external events in a bounded time. Realtime features include all POSIX specifications such as high-resolution timer management, sophisticated interrupt management, priority thread scheduling, realtime signals, and a number of communication and synchronization facilities with timeout capability.	TALON 5400 is a uniprocessor operating system supporting one DSP executing operating system and application code. It is assumed that the target system consists of one TMS320C54x DSP, Program ROM, optional Data ROM, External and/or Internal Data RAM as well as optional External and/or Internal Program RAM.	TALON 5400 is a multiprogrammed operating system that supports loading and execution of parallel POSIX processes, which are separate program modules allowing the application to be split to a group of relatively independent tasks executing concurrently and using the operating system services to synchronize their activities.	TALON 5400 is a multithreaded operating system which supports multiple threads of control within a single process, allowing the programmer to exploit the inherent parallelism in the application and to divide it into a set of activities executing in parallel in a tightly coupled manner. The supported thread model are the POSIX threads.

Operating System Capabilities

System ROM Image	Shared Libraries	Device Drivers	File Systems
The System ROM Image file is created using the dedicated System Builder Tool. In addition to serving as a repository for kernel and application code and data of an embedded system, the system ROM Image File may be used during system development and debugging stage, because this file may be loaded into a target system and the program modules it consists from may be debugged using a conventional source code debugger tool. The following types of Program Modules are supported by the system ROM image format. . Process Modules. . Process Driver Modules. . Shared Library Modules. . Library Driver Modules. . Kernel Extension Modules.	The TALON 5400 operating system provides facilities for sharing program code and data between program modules by means of Shared Libraries. The shared library mechanism offers a significant saving in program memory as compared with the regular linkable libraries. Shared libraries are automatically loaded when a process module or another shared library module that needs them is loaded. When several modules need the same shared library, the already loaded copy of the shared library is used. When no longer referenced, shared libraries are automatically unloaded to free memory resources.	The TALON 5400 operating system provides a mechanism to dynamically attach loadable Device Drivers modules. Support for generic character and block device drivers is provided by the device driver interface. In addition, a dedicated interface and supporting line discipline shared libraries are provided for TTY Device Drivers. A Pseudo-TTY device driver is supplied that offers a terminal support through the host device driver interface.	The TALON 5400 operating system provides a mechanism to dynamically attach loadable File Systems as kernel extension modules. Three different file systems are implemented: . Memory File System. Serves as the root of the file system hierarchy. . ROM File System. Supported implicitly for the system ROM Image. . Windows Host File System. For customization a Host Device Driver in the target system and a Target Device Driver in the host machine have to be developed.

Operating System Kernel

Design Limits	Unbounded Kernel Limits	Compilation Limits	Build Configuration Parameters
. Support for 64KW Program and 64KW Data memory space (extended program memory addressing capabilities such as the C548 are not supported). . Minimum 10KW and maximum 42KW kernel code size. . More than 180 system calls. . More than 280 library functions. . 32 priority levels for threads and messages. . 32 different signals (from these 12 are real-time signals). . 14 characters name length for named kernel objects.	. Number of threads per process. . Number of timers per process. . Number of queued signals per process. . Number of semaphores in the system. . Number of message queues in the system. . Number of mutexes in the system. . Number of condition variables in the system. . Number of reader-writer locks in the system. . Number of barriers in the system. . Number of spin locks in the system. . Number of ISR connected to an interrupt.	. 32 open semaphores per process. . 32 open files per process. . 32 open message queues per process. . 32 priority levels for threads and messages. . 32 thread-specific data keys per process. . 16 cleanup levels per thread.	. Max number of active processes in the system (4 to 32). . Interrupt stack size and location. . Available system memory layout. . System clock period. . Round-robin scheduling period. . Memory file system parameters.

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C Language Run Time Library

A POSIX-compliant implementation of the C language run-time library is provided which excludes mathematical functions and character handling, available in the Texas Instruments C language run-time library. The run-time library is completely Thread Safe, that is, can be used in a multithreaded process without fear of interference between threads executing in parallel.

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POSIX Extensions

The following extensions to the POSIX standard are provided to support specific features of TMS320C54x DSP family.

• Support for Program ROM.
• Support for optional Data ROM.
• Support for External and Internal Data RAM.
• Support for External and Internal Program RAM.
• Modified COFF format for tuning program modules to the DSP architecture, memory saving and efficient loading.

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Development Support

The TALON 5400 operating system package comes with a set of tools for system building and a set of utility programs to be used at run-time.

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Building Tools

The process of system configuration and building is largely automated by the following system building tools, running under versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

• System Configurator. A toolset to configure the operating system kernel services and features and to optimize kernel code with respect to program memory usage.
• System Builder. A tool to build the system ROM image file.
• Module Builder. A tool to build a program module using the optimized modified COFF format.
• Module Dumper. A tool for dumping the contents of a regular COFF file, a module COFF file or a ROM Image file.

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Customization

The system customization process is reduced to the customizing of a single source file, which is then linked with the operating system kernel to produce the executable kernel image. The rest of the customization is supported by the System Builder tool at system generation time.

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Documentation

The documentation is in HTML format for easy browsing and searching. The following entry documents are provided:

• Installation and Release Notes
• Thematic Index
• Alphabetic Index
• Thematic Index (Frame-Based)
• Alphabetic Index (Frame-Based)