The configurer automatically places an appropriate microkernel on every CPU. Among the jobs the kernel performs are the following:
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The kernel is a passive part of the system; it consumes processor cycles only when asked to do something, either as the result of an interrupt or an explicit program request (for example, a link or semaphore operation).
C6000 TIMER0 interrupts are used by the kernel to manage its internal clock (timer_now, timer_delay, and timer_wait), and for timeslicing (if you have just a single thread on a processor, there is no timeslicing). Timer management takes approximately 30 CPU cycles every millisecond. By setting CLOCK=0 for the processor, kernel clock interrupts and timeslicing are stopped; all processor cycles are available to your code, although this extreme step is rarely beneficial.
The kernel is very efficient; its performance does not depend on the number of threads in the system.
Every task is passed a handle to the kernel, visible as the variable _kernel. Usually you do not need to be aware of this, but certain functions require it as a parameter (the external interrupt handling functions, for example).