Re: tasking question

[stt@ada-uts]

Priority inversion is discussed in the session summary for Tasking
by Dennis Cornhill (credited to Lui Sha) in the special
issue of Ada Letters Volume VII, #6, Fall 1987 containing
the proceedings of the Internatiional Workshop on Real-Time
Ada Issues, Moretonhapstead, Devon, UK, 13-15 May 1987.

Priority inversion happens when a task is in rendezvous with
a low priority caller and a high priority task calls it.
Meanwhile, the task in rendezvous has been preempted by
a middle priority task.  The result is that a high priority
task is waiting while a middle priority task,
with which it has no synchronization, is proceeding.
A suggested solution was to define the priority of a task the
maximum of its own priority, that of its current caller,
and that of all of its pending callers (this represents a language
change).

A work-around is to make sure that an accepting task has
a specified priority at least as great of each of its potential callers,
though this may clearly create undesirable side-effects when the task
is not serving its highest-priority caller.
If the task is essentially a server or "monitor" task, with little
code outside of rendezvous, then setting it to a high priority
is probably prudent anyway so as to ensure that the shared resource
it manages is locked the minimal amount of time.

-Tucker Taft
Intermetrics, Inc.
Cambridge, MA  02138