- Scheduling
- Memory Management
- Synchronization
- Asynchronous Event Handling
- Asynchronous Transfer of Control
- Asynchronous Thread Termination
- Physical Memory Access
- Exceptions
- Minimum Implementations of the RTSJ
- Optionally Required Components
- Documentation Requirements
- Parameter Objects
- Java Platform Dependencies
Asynchronous Event Handling
The asynchronous event facility comprises two classes: AsyncEvent and AsyncEventHandler. An AsyncEvent object represents something that can happen, like a POSIX signal, a hardware interrupt, or a computed event like an airplane entering a specified region. When one of these events occurs, which is indicated by the fire() method being called, the associated handleAsyncEvent() methods of instances of AsyncEventHandler are scheduled and thus perform the required logic.
An instance of AsyncEvent manages two things: 1) the unblocking of handlers when the event is fired, and 2) the set of handlers associated with the event. This set can be queried, have handlers added, or have handlers removed.
An instance of AsyncEventHandler can be thought of as something roughly similar to a thread. It is a Runnable object: when the event fires, the handleAsyncEvent() methods of the associated handlers are scheduled. What distinguishes an AsyncEventHandler from a simple Runnable is that an AsyncEventHandler has associated instances of ReleaseParameters, SchedulingParameters and MemoryParameters that control the actual execution of the handler once the associated AsyncEvent is fired. When an event is fired, the handlers are executed asynchronously, scheduled according to the associated ReleaseParameters and SchedulingParameters objects, in a manner that looks like the handler has just been assigned to its own thread. It is intended that the system can cope well with situations where there are large numbers of instances of AsyncEvent and AsyncEventHandler (tens of thousands). The number of fired (in process) handlers is expected to be smaller.
A specialized form of an AsyncEvent is the Timer class, which represents an event whose occurrence is driven by time. There are two forms of Timers: the OneShotTimer and the PeriodicTimer. Instances of OneShotTimer fire once, at the specified time. Periodic timers fire off at the specified time, and then periodically according to a specified interval.
Timers are driven by Clock objects. There is a special Clock object, Clock.getRealtimeClock(), that represents the real-time clock. The Clock class may be extended to represent other clocks the underlying system might make available (such as a soft clock of some granularity).