FreeRTOS Overview
Overview
FreeRTOS is an open source RTOS (real-time operating system) kernel that is integrated into ESP-IDF as a component. Thus, all ESP-IDF applications and many ESP-IDF components are written based on FreeRTOS. The FreeRTOS kernel is ported to all architectures (i.e., Xtensa and RISC-V) available of ESP chips.
Furthermore, ESP-IDF provides different implementations of FreeRTOS in order to support SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) on multi-core ESP chips. This document provides an overview of the FreeRTOS component, the different FreeRTOS implementations offered by ESP-IDF, and the common aspects across all implementations.
Implementations
The official FreeRTOS (henceforth referred to as Vanilla FreeRTOS) is a single-core RTOS. In order to support the various multi-core ESP targets, ESP-IDF supports different FreeRTOS implementations as listed below:
ESP-IDF FreeRTOS
ESP-IDF FreeRTOS is a FreeRTOS implementation based on Vanilla FreeRTOS v10.5.1, but contains significant modifications to support SMP. ESP-IDF FreeRTOS only supports two cores at most (i.e., dual core SMP), but is more optimized for this scenario by design. For more details regarding ESP-IDF FreeRTOS and its modifications, please refer to the FreeRTOS (IDF) document.
Note
ESP-IDF FreeRTOS is currently the default FreeRTOS implementation for ESP-IDF.
Amazon SMP FreeRTOS
Amazon SMP FreeRTOS is an SMP implementation of FreeRTOS that is officially supported by Amazon. Amazon SMP FreeRTOS is able to support N-cores (i.e., more than two cores). Amazon SMP FreeRTOS can be enabled via the CONFIG_FREERTOS_SMP option. For more details regarding Amazon SMP FreeRTOS, please refer to the official Amazon SMP FreeRTOS documentation.
Warning
The Amazon SMP FreeRTOS implementation (and its port in ESP-IDF) are currently in experimental/beta state. Therefore, significant behavioral changes and breaking API changes can occur.
Configuration
Kernel Configuration
Vanilla FreeRTOS requires that ports and applications configure the kernel by adding various #define config...
macro definitions to the FreeRTOSConfig.h
header file. Vanilla FreeRTOS supports a list of kernel configuration options which allow various kernel behaviors and features to be enabled or disabled.
However, for all FreeRTOS ports in ESP-IDF, the FreeRTOSConfig.h header file is considered private and must not be modified by users. A large number of kernel configuration options in FreeRTOSConfig.h
are hard-coded as they are either required/not supported by ESP-IDF. All kernel configuration options that are configurable by the user are exposed via menuconfig under Component Config/FreeRTOS/Kernel
.
For the full list of user configurable kernel options, see Project Configuration. The list below highlights some commonly used kernel configuration options:
CONFIG_FREERTOS_UNICORE runs FreeRTOS only on Core 0. Note that this is not equivalent to running Vanilla FreeRTOS. Furthermore, this option may affect behavior of components other than freertos. For more details regarding the effects of running FreeRTOS on a single core, refer to Single-Core Mode (if using ESP-IDF FreeRTOS) or the official Amazon SMP FreeRTOS documentation. Alternatively, users can also search for occurrences of
CONFIG_FREERTOS_UNICORE
in the ESP-IDF components.
Note
As ESP32-C6 is a single core SoC, the CONFIG_FREERTOS_UNICORE configuration is always set.
CONFIG_FREERTOS_ENABLE_BACKWARD_COMPATIBILITY enables backward compatibility with some FreeRTOS macros/types/functions that were deprecated from v8.0 onwards.
Port Configuration
All other FreeRTOS related configuration options that are not part of the kernel configuration are exposed via menuconfig under Component Config/FreeRTOS/Port
. These options configure aspects such as:
The FreeRTOS ports themselves (e.g., tick timer selection, ISR stack size)
Additional features added to the FreeRTOS implementation or ports
Using FreeRTOS
Application Entry Point
Unlike Vanilla FreeRTOS, users of FreeRTOS in ESP-IDF must never call vTaskStartScheduler()
and vTaskEndScheduler()
. Instead, ESP-IDF starts FreeRTOS automatically. Users must define a void app_main(void)
function which acts as the entry point for user's application and is automatically invoked on ESP-IDF startup.
Typically, users would spawn the rest of their application's task from
app_main
.The
app_main
function is allowed to return at any point (i.e., before the application terminates).The
app_main
function is called from themain
task.
Background Tasks
During startup, ESP-IDF and the FreeRTOS kernel automatically create multiple tasks that run in the background (listed in the the table below).
Task Name |
Description |
Stack Size |
Affinity |
Priority |
---|---|---|---|---|
Idle Tasks ( |
An idle task ( |
Core x |
|
|
FreeRTOS Timer Task ( |
FreeRTOS will create the Timer Service/Daemon Task if any FreeRTOS Timer APIs are called by the application |
Core 0 |
||
Main Task ( |
Task that simply calls |
|
||
IPC Tasks ( |
When CONFIG_FREERTOS_UNICORE is false, an IPC task ( |
Core x |
|
|
ESP Timer Task ( |
ESP-IDF creates the ESP Timer Task used to process ESP Timer callbacks |
Core 0 |
|
Note
Note that if an application uses other ESP-IDF features (e.g., Wi-Fi or Bluetooth), those features may create their own background tasks in addition to the tasks listed in the table above.
FreeRTOS Additions
ESP-IDF provides some supplemental features to FreeRTOS such as Ring Buffers, ESP-IDF style Tick and Idle Hooks, and TLSP deletion callbacks. See FreeRTOS (Supplemental Features) for more details.
FreeRTOS Heap
Vanilla FreeRTOS provides its own selection of heap implementations. However, ESP-IDF already implements its own heap (see Heap Memory Allocation), thus ESP-IDF does not make use of the heap implementations provided by Vanilla FreeRTOS. All FreeRTOS ports in ESP-IDF map FreeRTOS memory allocation or free calls (e.g., pvPortMalloc()
and pvPortFree()
) to ESP-IDF heap API (i.e., heap_caps_malloc()
and heap_caps_free()
). However, the FreeRTOS ports ensure that all dynamic memory allocated by FreeRTOS is placed in internal memory.
Note
If users wish to place FreeRTOS tasks/objects in external memory, users can use the following methods:
Allocate the task or object using one of the
...CreateWithCaps()
API, such asxTaskCreateWithCaps()
andxQueueCreateWithCaps()
(see IDF Additional API for more details).Manually allocate external memory for those objects using
heap_caps_malloc()
, then create the objects from the allocated memory using on of the...CreateStatic()
FreeRTOS functions.
Application Examples
system/freertos/basic_freertos_smp_usage demonstrates how to use basic FreeRTOS APIs for task creation, communication, synchronization, and batch processing within an SMP architecture on ESP32-C6.
system/freertos/real_time_stats demonstrates how to use FreeRTOS's function vTaskGetRunTimeStats() to obtain CPU usage statistics of tasks with respect to a specified duration, rather than over the entire runtime of FreeRTOS.