The following three elements are associated with every event:
- The Task Priority Level (TPL) of the event.
- A notification function.
- A notification context.
The notification function for a wait event is executed when the state of the event is checked or when the event is being waited upon. The notification function of a signal event is executed whenever the event transitions from the waiting state to the signaled state. The notification context is passed into the notification function each time the notification function is executed. The TPL is the priority at which the notification function is executed. Table 3 lists the four TPL levels that are defined today. Additional TPL's could be added later. An example of a compatible addition to the TPL list could include a series of "Interrupt TPL's" between TPL_NOTIFY and TPL_HIGH_LEVEL in order to provide interrupt-driven I/O support within EFI.
TPLs serve the following two purposes:
- To define the priority in which notification functions are executed.
- To create locks.
For priority definition, you use this mechanism only when more than one event is in the signaled state at the same time. In these cases, the application executes the notification function that has been registered with the higher priority first. Also, notification functions at higher priorities can interrupt the execution of notification functions executing at a lower priority.
For creating locks, code running in normal context and code in an interrupt context can access the same data structure because EFI does support a single-timer interrupt. This access can cause problems and unexpected results if the updates to a shared data structure are not atomic. An EFI application or EFI driver that wants to guarantee exclusive access to a shared data structure can temporarily raise the task priority level to prevent simultaneous access from both normal context and interrupt context. The application can create a lock by temporarily raising the task priority level to TPL_HIGH_LEVEL. This level blocks even the one-timer interrupt, but you must take care to minimize the amount of time that the system is at TPL_HIGH_LEVEL. Since all timer-based events are blocked during this time, any driver that requires periodic access to a device is prevented from accessing its device. A TPL is similar to the IRQL in Microsoft Windows and the SPL in various Unix implementations. A TPL describes a prioritization scheme for access control to resources.
