[sdiy] Organisation of tasks in synth's main uP

[Thomas Strathmann]

On 11/23/10 20:07 , grant at musictechnologiesgroup.com wrote:
> And there is a great book by Niall Murphy called Front Panel if anyone
> is interested...

Interesting. The parts that are in the Amazon preview for the most part 
look well rounded. I may have missed it, but I have not seen a detailed 
discussion of scheduling algorithms. When you use an RTOS, you'll want 
to make sure that tasks meat their deadlines and that ultimately leads 
to using some theory (or appropriate tools). I think the book could also 
benefit from a discussion of state charts for modelling the behaviour of 
systems. Using Mealy or Moore automata is all good and fine, but you may 
find that you'll want to have hierarchical models (supported by tools 
like Statemate or Stateflow). Live sequence charts might also be of 
interest (with tools like the Play-Engine). Using models with a formal 
theory to them might seem at first like academic over-indulgence but 
once your systems become non-trivial (with a few recurring tasks, 
dependencies between them, priorities, tight deadlines for some and 
looser deadlines for others etc.) you'll derive much value from a 
comprehensive model (even if it's drawn on paper). You'll find 
conceptual errors much faster (or at all) that might otherwise be quite 
elusive.

	Thomas