System Chipset

(CORE/SYS.JAVA)

 

This component provides a unified way to access the system devices in SaM. It is the equivalent of a computer chipset. The three components currently accessible from this class are the Processor, the Memory, and the Video card.

The Sys class was originally designed to be static, but it was later redesigned as a non-static class in order to allow components to work in parallel (multiple systems). This works by sending a Sys object as a parameter to other components, which need it. The Processor, Memory, and GUI constructors take a Sys argument. The Processor and Memory are actually constructed when the Sys object is constructed, since every system will have memory and processor. The SaM instructions use a method(void setSystem(Sys sys)) to get access to the system at execution time - they don't need it prior to that time.

To use this class, simply create a new Sys object. This will initialize the processor and memory. If you pass an integer to the constructor you can instantiate multiple processors - this feature is currently of limited functionality, but could be used to implement multiprocessing in the future. The following methods are available to work with the Sys object:

• Processor cpu() - return the first processor of this system
• Collection<Processor> cpus() - return the entire collection of processors
• Memory mem() - return the system memory
• Video video() - return the system video object (null if not available)
• void setVideo(Video v) - set the system video object