Summary

This short blog explains a practical double-buffering technique for communicating between asynchronous processes on bare-metal embedded systems. Jason Sachs walks through how the "revolving fireplace" pattern swaps buffers safely without locks, and when to choose this approach over RTOS-based synchronization.

Key Takeaways

• Implement a double-buffering (revolving fireplace) pattern to safely exchange data between producers and consumers on bare-metal systems.
• Avoid locks by using single-writer/single-reader buffer semantics and a simple buffer-index swap protocol.
• Apply memory ordering techniques (volatiles, barriers, or atomics) appropriate to the target CPU to ensure data coherency.
• Design and test edge cases: buffer overrun, late readers, and interrupt-driven producers to guarantee deterministic behavior.

Who Should Read This

Embedded firmware engineers and developers with some bare-metal experience who need lightweight, deterministic concurrency solutions without an RTOS.

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