The 16k FreeRTOS heap originally had all TCBs and stacks dynamically
allocated within it (plus semaphores and some other things). Now that
xTaskCreateStatic is used instead of xTaskCreate, the TCBs and stacks
are allocated statically and no longer use any of the FreeRTOS heap.
Therefore, the FreeRTOS stack can be shrunk by the amount that has been
made static. Furthermore, the TCBs and stack that are now static should
be placed in the .rtos_heaps section of RAM because this RAM is treated
specially by the bootloader (the bootloader executes from the first 16k
of RAM and loads the firmware into the section starting after the 16k).
After this patch the FreeRTOS heap (ucHeap) is 7200 bytes. The memory
available for the MicroPython heap is 54936 bytes (including GC overhead).
This is a pristine copy (actually a subset of files) of upstream FreeRTOS
v9.0.0.
Modifications to the previous version of FreeRTOS (v8.1.2) included
addition of __attribute__ ((section (".boot"))) to the following
functions:
pxPortInitialiseStack
prvTaskExitError
prvPortStartFirstTask
xPortStartScheduler
vPortSetupTimerInterrupt
xTaskGenericCreate
vTaskStartScheduler
prvInitialiseTCBVariables
prvInitialiseTaskLists
prvAllocateTCBAndStack
This attribute will need to be reinstated on a case-by-case basis
because some of the above functions are now removed/changed.
This has implications all over the place. I have to admit that
you can instantly see that usability improves, but it costs 3K.
At the same time I took the oportunity to rename the '/SFLASH'
drive to '/flash' which improves compatibility with the pyboard.
Such functions are never used after MicroPython has started, and they
remain in RAM wasting space. Now they are placed in a special section
named "boot" which sits just before the heap, allowing us to extend
the effective heap area up to the new boot section. Right now, this
gives us back ~1K, but in the future, more functions might end up in
there as well.
The port currently implements support for GPIO, RTC, ExtInt and the WiFi
subsystem. A small file system is available in the serial flash. A
bootloader which makes OTA updates possible, is also part of this initial
implementation.
Damien George