An Implementation of Single Stack Multi-threading for Small Embedded Systems

Kim Yong Seok

Journal of The Korea Society of Computer and Information

Abbr : JKSCI
2016, 21(4), pp.1-8
Publisher : The Korean Society Of Computer And Information
Research Area : Computer Science

Kim Yong Seok ¹

¹강원대학교

ABSTRACT

In small embedded systems including IoT devices, memory size is very small and it is important to reduce memory amount for execution of application programs. For multi-threaded applications, stack may consume a large amount of memory because each thread has its own stack of sufficiently large size for worst case. This paper presents an implementation of single stack multi-threading, called SSThread (Single Stack Thread), by sharing a stack for all threads to reduce stack memory size. By using SSThread, multi-threaded applications can be programmed based on normal C language environment and there is no requirement of transporting multi-threading operating systems. It consists of several library functions and various C macro definitions. Even though some functional restrictions in comparison to operating systems supporting complete multi-thread functionalities, it is very useful for small embedded systems with tiny memory size and it is simple to setup programming environment for multi-thread applications.
KEYWORDS

Multi-threading, Stack sharing, C preprocessor, IoT
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