Getting Started with eCosTM
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# Real-time kernel

The core of eCos is a full-featured, flexible, and configurable real-time kernel.

The kernel provides, among other features, multi-threading, a choice of schedulers, a full set of synchronization primitives, memory allocation primitives, and thread manipulation functions (see the eCos Reference Manual for the full kernel API).

The kernel is carefully designed so that some parts of it (the scheduler, for example) can be changed or replaced without affecting other components of the kernel itself.

The following is a partial list of kernel features:

- choice of memory allocation algorithm

- choice of scheduling algorithm

- a rich set of synchronization primitives

- timers, counters, and alarms

- interrupt handling

- exception handling

- cache control

- thread support

- kernel support for multi-threaded debugging with GDB

- trace buffers

- infrastructure and instrumentation

The kernel API and configuration are described in the eCos Reference Manual.

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