xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/mi_switch.9 (revision 1b6c76a2fe091c74f08427e6c870851025a9cf67)
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37.\" $FreeBSD$
38.\"
39.Dd November 24, 1996
40.Dt MI_SWITCH 9
41.Os FreeBSD
42.Sh NAME
43.Nm mi_switch ,
44.Nm cpu_switch ,
45.Nm cpu_throw
46.Nd switch to another process context
47.Sh SYNOPSIS
48.Fd #include <sys/param.h>
49.Fd #include <sys/proc.h>
50.Ft void
51.Fn mi_switch "void"
52.Ft void
53.Fn cpu_switch "void"
54.Ft void
55.Fn cpu_throw "void"
56.Sh DESCRIPTION
57The
58.Fn mi_switch
59function implements the machine independent prelude to a process context
60switch.
61It is called from only a few distinguished places in the kernel
62code as a result of the principle of non-preemtable kernel mode execution.
63The three major uses of
64.Nm
65can be enumerated as follows:
66.Bl -enum -offset indent
67.It
68from within
69.Xr sleep 9
70and
71.Xr tsleep 9
72when the current process
73voluntarily relinquishes the CPU to wait for some resource to become
74available.
75.It
76after handling a trap
77.Pq e.g. a system call, device interrupt
78when the kernel prepares a return to user-mode execution.
79This case is
80typically handled by machine dependent trap-handling code after detection
81of a change in the signal disposition of the current process, or when a
82higher priority process might be available to run.
83The latter event is
84communicated by the machine independent scheduling routines by calling
85the machine defined
86.Fn need_resched .
87.It
88in the signal handling code
89.Pq see Xr issignal 9
90if a signal is delivered that causes a process to stop.
91.El
92.Pp
93.Fn mi_switch
94records the amount of time the current process has been running in the
95process structure and checks this value against the CPU time limits
96allocated to the process
97.Pq see Xr getrlimit 2 .
98Exceeding the soft limit results in a
99.Dv SIGXCPU
100signal to be posted to the process, while exceeding the hard limit will
101cause a
102.Dv SIGKILL .
103After these administrative tasks are done,
104.Fn mi_switch
105hands over control to the machine dependent routine
106.Fn cpu_switch ,
107which will perform the actual process context switch.
108.Pp
109.Fn cpu_switch
110first saves the context of the current process.
111Next, it calls
112.Fn chooseproc
113to determine which process to run next.
114Finally, it reads in the saved context of the new process and starts to
115execute the new process.
116.Pp
117.Fn cpu_throw
118is similar to
119.Fn cpu_switch
120except that it does not save the context of the old process.
121This function is useful when the kernel does not have an old process
122context to save, such as when CPUs other than the boot CPU perform their
123first task switch, or when the kernel does not care about the state of the
124old process, such as in
125.Fn cpu_exit
126when the kernel terminates the current process and switches into a new
127process.
128.Pp
129To protect the
130.Xr runqueue 9 ,
131all of these functions must be called with the
132.Va sched_lock
133mutex held.
134.Sh SEE ALSO
135.Xr issignal 9 ,
136.Xr mutex 9 ,
137.Xr runqueue 9 ,
138.Xr tsleep 9 ,
139.Xr wakeup 9
140