actor

Actor

This is an implementation of Actor Model which is a conceptual concurrent computation model. Check out what Actor Model is here in wikipedia.

All actors with the same priority share one execution context. So every actor should be implemented in the way of run-to-completion. This implementation decision is maid for the resource-constrained microcontrollers. You can run actors in another separated execution context as giving it a different priority.

Integration Guide

• ACTOR_DEFAULT_MESSAGE_SIZE
  • Memory is allocated with fixed-size blocks defined by ACTOR_DEFAULT_MESSAGE_SIZE to avoid external fragmentation.
• ACTOR_PRIORITY_MAX
  • Threads are created according to the number of priorities. The default is 1.
• ACTOR_PRIORITY_BASE
  • Priority increases or decreases by 1 based on it. The default is 1.
  • If the lower number the higher priority, then define ACTOR_PRIORITY_DESCENDING. The default is ascending.

Example

struct actor_msg {
    int id;
};

static uint8_t mem[256];
static uint8_t timer_mem[256];
static struct actor my_actor1;

static void my_actor1_handler(struct actor *actor, struct actor_msg *msg) {
    printf("actor called %p with msg id: %d", actor, msg->id);
    actor_free(msg);
}

int main(void) {
    actor_init(mem, sizeof(mem), 4096);
    actor_timer_init(timer_mem, sizeof(timer_mem));

    actor_set(&my_actor1, my_actor1_handler, 0);

    ...

    while (1) {
        struct actor_msg *msg = actor_alloc(sizeof(*msg));
        msg->id = 1;
        actor_send(&my_actor1, msg);

        sleep_ms(1000);
    }
}