RTOS Fundamentals: Scheduling and Concurrency

Compare preemptive, cooperative, and round-robin scheduling models and their suitability for different embedded applications.

Perform Rate Monotonic Scheduling (RMS) schedulability analysis for a given set of periodic tasks.

Explain the mechanics of a context switch, detailing what processor state is saved and how the stack frame is managed.

Differentiate between a mutex, semaphore (binary/counting), and spinlock, and select the appropriate primitive for a given synchronization problem.

Solve the classic producer-consumer problem using a shared buffer protected by semaphores.

Identify the four necessary conditions for deadlock and apply prevention or avoidance strategies in a multitasking environment.

Explain priority inversion with a concrete scenario and compare Priority Inheritance Protocol (PIP) vs. Priority Ceiling Protocol (PCP) as solutions.

Implement deferred interrupt handling in an RTOS by signaling a high-priority task from an ISR.