There are hardware timers whose frequency can't be expressed as
ticks-per-microsecond integer-value because only a ticks-per-millisecond
integer-value is precise enough. We don't want to use expensive
floating-point values here but nonetheless want to translate from ticks
to time with microseconds precision. Thus, we split the input in two and
translate both parts separately. This way, we can raise precision by
shifting the values to their optimal bit position. Afterwards, the results
are shifted back and merged together again.
As this algorithm is not so trivial anymore and used by at least three
timer drivers (base-hw/x86_64, base-hw/cortex_a9, timer/pit), move it to a
generic header to avoid redundancy.
Ref #2400
Instead of holding SPEC-variable dependent files and directories inline
within the repository structure, move them into 'spec' subdirectories
at the corresponding levels, e.g.:
repos/base/include/spec
repos/base/mk/spec
repos/base/lib/mk/spec
repos/base/src/core/spec
...
Moreover, this commit removes the 'platform' directories. That term was
used in an overloaded sense. All SPEC-relative 'platform' directories are
now named 'spec'. Other files, like for instance those related to the
kernel/architecture specific startup library, where moved from 'platform'
directories to explicit, more meaningful places like e.g.: 'src/lib/startup'.
Fix#1673
Previously, the timer was used to remember the state of the time slices.
This was sufficient before priorities entered the scene as a thread always
received a fresh time slice when he was scheduled away. However, with
priorities this isn't always the case. A thread can be preempted by another
thread due to a higher priority. In this case the low-priority thread must
remember how much time he has consumed from its current time slice because
the timer gets re-programmed. Otherwise, if we have high-priority threads
that block and unblock with high frequency, the head of the next lower
priority would start with a fresh time slice all the time and is never
superseded.
fix#1287
This patch changes the top-level directory layout as a preparatory
step for improving the tools for managing 3rd-party source codes.
The rationale is described in the issue referenced below.
Issue #1082
