13. Barrier Manager — RTEMS Classic API Guide 5.4-rc2 (21st August 2026) documentation

# 13. Barrier Manager

## 13.1. Introduction

The barrier manager provides a unique synchronization capability which can be used to have a set of tasks block and be unblocked as a set. The directives provided by the barrier manager are:

- rtems_barrier_create - Create a barrier

- rtems_barrier_ident - Get ID of a barrier

- rtems_barrier_delete - Delete a barrier

- rtems_barrier_wait - Wait at a barrier

- rtems_barrier_release - Release a barrier

## 13.2. Background

A barrier can be viewed as a gate at which tasks wait until the gate is opened. This has many analogies in the real world. Horses and other farm animals may approach a closed gate and gather in front of it, waiting for someone to open the gate so they may proceed. Similarly, ticket holders gather at the gates of arenas before concerts or sporting events waiting for the arena personnel to open the gates so they may enter.

Barriers are useful during application initialization. Each application task can perform its local initialization before waiting for the application as a whole to be initialized. Once all tasks have completed their independent initializations, the “application ready” barrier can be released.

### 13.2.1. Automatic Versus Manual Barriers

Just as with a real-world gate, barriers may be configured to be manually opened or automatically opened. All tasks calling the `rtems_barrier_wait` directive will block until a controlling task invokes the `rtems_barrier_release` directive.

Automatic barriers are created with a limit to the number of tasks which may simultaneously block at the barrier. Once this limit is reached, all of the tasks are released. For example, if the automatic limit is ten tasks, then the first nine tasks calling the `rtems_barrier_wait` directive will block. When the tenth task calls the `rtems_barrier_wait` directive, the nine blocked tasks will be released and the tenth task returns to the caller without blocking.

### 13.2.2. Building a Barrier Attribute Set

In general, an attribute set is built by a bitwise OR of the desired attribute components. The following table lists the set of valid barrier attributes:

`RTEMS_BARRIER_AUTOMATIC_RELEASE`

  automatically release the barrier when the configured number of tasks are blocked

`RTEMS_BARRIER_MANUAL_RELEASE`

  only release the barrier when the application invokes the `rtems_barrier_release` directive. (default)

Note

Barriers only support FIFO blocking order because all waiting tasks are released as a set. Thus the released tasks will all become ready to execute at the same time and compete for the processor based upon their priority.

Attribute values are specifically designed to be mutually exclusive, therefore bitwise OR and addition operations are equivalent as long as each attribute appears exactly once in the component list. An attribute listed as a default is not required to appear in the attribute list, although it is a good programming practice to specify default attributes. If all defaults are desired, the attribute `RTEMS_DEFAULT_ATTRIBUTES` should be specified on this call.

This example demonstrates the attribute_set parameter needed to create a barrier with the automatic release policy. The `attribute_set` parameter passed to the `rtems_barrier_create` directive will be `RTEMS_BARRIER_AUTOMATIC_RELEASE`. In this case, the user must also specify the `maximum_waiters` parameter.

## 13.3. Operations

### 13.3.1. Creating a Barrier

The `rtems_barrier_create` directive creates a barrier with a user-specified name and the desired attributes. RTEMS allocates a Barrier Control Block (BCB) from the BCB free list. This data structure is used by RTEMS to manage the newly created barrier. Also, a unique barrier ID is generated and returned to the calling task.

### 13.3.2. Obtaining Barrier IDs

When a barrier is created, RTEMS generates a unique barrier ID and assigns it to the created barrier until it is deleted. The barrier ID may be obtained by either of two methods. First, as the result of an invocation of the `rtems_barrier_create` directive, the barrier ID is stored in a user provided location. Second, the barrier ID may be obtained later using the `rtems_barrier_ident` directive. The barrier ID is used by other barrier manager directives to access this barrier.

### 13.3.3. Waiting at a Barrier

The `rtems_barrier_wait` directive is used to wait at the specified barrier. The task may wait forever for the barrier to be released or it may specify a timeout. Specifying a timeout limits the interval the task will wait before returning with an error status code.

If the barrier is configured as automatic and there are already one less then the maximum number of waiters, then the call will unblock all tasks waiting at the barrier and the caller will return immediately.

When the task does wait to acquire the barrier, then it is placed in the barrier’s task wait queue in FIFO order. All tasks waiting on a barrier are returned an error code when the barrier is deleted.

### 13.3.4. Releasing a Barrier

The `rtems_barrier_release` directive is used to release the specified barrier. When the `rtems_barrier_release` is invoked, all tasks waiting at the barrier are immediately made ready to execute and begin to compete for the processor to execute.

### 13.3.5. Deleting a Barrier

The `rtems_barrier_delete` directive removes a barrier from the system and frees its control block. A barrier can be deleted by any local task that knows the barrier’s ID. As a result of this directive, all tasks blocked waiting for the barrier to be released, will be readied and returned a status code which indicates that the barrier was deleted. Any subsequent references to the barrier’s name and ID are invalid.

## 13.4. Directives

This section details the barrier manager’s directives. A subsection is dedicated to each of this manager’s directives and describes the calling sequence, related constants, usage, and status codes.

### 13.4.1. BARRIER_CREATE - Create a barrier

CALLING SEQUENCE:

      rtems_status_code rtems_barrier_create(
          rtems_name           name,
          rtems_attribute      attribute_set,
          uint32_t             maximum_waiters,
          rtems_id            *id
      );

DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:

  `RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL` | barrier created successfully
  `RTEMS_INVALID_NAME` | invalid barrier name
  `RTEMS_INVALID_ADDRESS` | `id` is NULL
  `RTEMS_TOO_MANY` | too many barriers created

DESCRIPTION:

  This directive creates a barrier which resides on the local node. The created barrier has the user-defined name specified in `name` and the initial count specified in `count`. For control and maintenance of the barrier, RTEMS allocates and initializes a BCB. The RTEMS-assigned barrier id is returned in `id`. This barrier id is used with other barrier related directives to access the barrier.

  `RTEMS_BARRIER_MANUAL_RELEASE` | only release

  Specifying `RTEMS_BARRIER_AUTOMATIC_RELEASE` in `attribute_set` causes tasks calling the `rtems_barrier_wait` directive to block until there are `maximum_waiters - 1` tasks waiting at the barrier. When the `maximum_waiters` task invokes the `rtems_barrier_wait` directive, the previous `maximum_waiters - 1` tasks are automatically released and the caller returns.

  In contrast, when the `RTEMS_BARRIER_MANUAL_RELEASE` attribute is specified, there is no limit on the number of tasks that will block at the barrier. Only when the `rtems_barrier_release` directive is invoked, are the tasks waiting at the barrier unblocked.

NOTES:

  This directive may cause the calling task to be preempted due to an obtain and release of the object allocator mutex.

  The following barrier attribute constants are defined by RTEMS:

  `RTEMS_BARRIER_AUTOMATIC_RELEASE` | automatically release the barrier when the configured number of tasks are blocked
  `RTEMS_BARRIER_MANUAL_RELEASE` | only release the barrier when the application invokes the `rtems_barrier_release` directive. (default)

### 13.4.2. BARRIER_IDENT - Get ID of a barrier

CALLING SEQUENCE:

      rtems_status_code rtems_barrier_ident(
          rtems_name        name,
          rtems_id         *id
      );

DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:

  `RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL` | barrier identified successfully
  `RTEMS_INVALID_NAME` | barrier name not found
  `RTEMS_INVALID_NODE` | invalid node id

DESCRIPTION:

  This directive obtains the barrier id associated with the barrier name. If the barrier name is not unique, then the barrier id will match one of the barriers with that name. However, this barrier id is not guaranteed to correspond to the desired barrier. The barrier id is used by other barrier related directives to access the barrier.

NOTES:

  This directive will not cause the running task to be preempted.

### 13.4.3. BARRIER_DELETE - Delete a barrier

CALLING SEQUENCE:

      rtems_status_code rtems_barrier_delete(
          rtems_id id
      );

DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:

  `RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL` | barrier deleted successfully
  `RTEMS_INVALID_ID` | invalid barrier id

DESCRIPTION:

  This directive deletes the barrier specified by `id`. All tasks blocked waiting for the barrier to be released will be readied and returned a status code which indicates that the barrier was deleted. The BCB for this barrier is reclaimed by RTEMS.

NOTES:

  This directive may cause the calling task to be preempted due to an obtain and release of the object allocator mutex.

  The calling task will be preempted if it is enabled by the task’s execution mode and a higher priority local task is waiting on the deleted barrier. The calling task will NOT be preempted if all of the tasks that are waiting on the barrier are remote tasks.

  The calling task does not have to be the task that created the barrier. Any local task that knows the barrier id can delete the barrier.

### 13.4.4. BARRIER_WAIT - Wait at a barrier

CALLING SEQUENCE:

      rtems_status_code rtems_barrier_wait(
          rtems_id         id,
          rtems_interval   timeout
      );

DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:

  `RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL` | barrier released and task unblocked
  `RTEMS_UNSATISFIED` | barrier not available
  `RTEMS_TIMEOUT` | timed out waiting for barrier
  `RTEMS_OBJECT_WAS_DELETED` | barrier deleted while waiting
  `RTEMS_INVALID_ID` | invalid barrier id

DESCRIPTION:

> This directive waits at the barrier specified by `id`. The timeout parameter specifies the maximum interval the calling task is willing to be blocked waiting for the barrier. If it is set to `RTEMS_NO_TIMEOUT`, then the calling task will wait until the barrier is released.

> Conceptually, the calling task should always be thought of as blocking when it makes this call and being unblocked when the barrier is released. If the barrier is configured for manual release, this rule of thumb will always be valid. If the barrier is configured for automatic release, all callers will block except for the one which is the Nth task which trips the automatic release condition.

NOTES:

  A clock tick is required to support the timeout functionality of this directive.

### 13.4.5. BARRIER_RELEASE - Release a barrier

CALLING SEQUENCE:

      rtems_status_code rtems_barrier_release(
          rtems_id  id,
          uint32_t *released
      );

DIRECTIVE STATUS CODES:

  `RTEMS_SUCCESSFUL` | barrier released successfully
  `RTEMS_INVALID_ID` | invalid barrier id

DESCRIPTION:

  This directive releases the barrier specified by id. All tasks waiting at the barrier will be unblocked.

NOTES:

  The calling task may be preempted if it causes a higher priority task to be made ready for execution.