A Non-Blocking Buffer Mechanism for Real-Time Event Message Communicatoin

It is desirable to facilitate data communications among concurrent computation threads without incurring non-essential synchronizations in real-time computing systems. An interaction mechanism, called the non-blocking writer (NBW) mechanism and invented by Kopetz, is useful in facilitating state message communication from a producer to a consumer thread in real-time applications. A more widely applicable practical interaction mechanism called the non-blocking buffer (NBB) is presented here. The NBB mechanism can be viewed as a significant extension of the NBW mechanism. The NBB mechanism facilitates communication of event messages from a producer to a consumer without causing any party to experience blocking. Therefore, its application scope includes all conceivable producer-consumer situations. The NBB mechanism is not a replacement of but rather a companion to the NBW mechanism since the latter facilitates the most efficient state message communication. The application of NBBs in building middleware supporting real-time objects is discussed as a demonstration of the utility of the NBB mechanism.