Patent ID: 7562207

Claim:
A deterministic microcontroller comprising: a deterministic microprocessor unit; a real time operating system operable on said deterministic microprocessor unit; a plurality of hardware contexts, said real time operating system operating in a first predetermined one hardware context of said plurality of hardware contexts, the other contexts of said plurality of hardware contexts operable to run corresponding predetermined functions independent of said real time operating system; a hardware context manager comprising hardware circuitry operable as a hardware context manager to selectively determine one of a plurality of said hardware contexts of operation of said microcontroller; a plurality of sets of hardware registers, each set of said hardware registers dedicated to a corresponding respective predetermined one of said hardware contexts and used to store context information for a corresponding predetermined one of said plurality of contexts; said hardware context manager operating to determine which context of said plurality of hardware contexts is active and operating to selectively switch to a corresponding set of hardware registers from said plurality of sets of hardware registers corresponding to the determined active context, said microprocessor unit utilizing said selected corresponding set of hardware registers; said hardware context manager and said plurality of sets of hardware registers cooperatively operating such that the contents of each set of hardware registers that is not selected as corresponding to the active context remains stored in its corresponding set of hardware registers for subsequent execution.