KernelinsideMemory management

Updated Apr 2025

Statically allocated FreeRTOS reference project

Introduction

RTOS objects, such as tasks, queues, semaphores and software timers, can be created using automatically allocated RAM, or pre-allocated (statically allocated) RAM. The following pages provide more details:

This page documents a reference project that demonstrates FreeRTOS being used with configSUPPORT_DYNAMIC_ALLOCATION set to 0 - so with all the RTOS objects being created using pre-allocated (potentially statically allocated) RAM, and without building any of the FreeRTOS heap implementations. The reference uses the FreeRTOS Windows port, so it can be built and executed without the need for any specific embedded hardware.

Building the Reference Project

  1. If you don't already have it installed, download and install the free community edition of Microsoft Visual Studioexternal_link.
  2. If you have not done so already, download and unzip the official FreeRTOS distribution.
  3. Start Visual Studio, then use the File|Open|Project/Solution menu item to open the Win32.sln solution file, which is located in the FreeRTOS/Demo/WIN32-MSVC-Static-Allocation-Only directory of the official FreeRTOS distribution.
  4. Read the comments in main.c, before compiling and then either debugging or running the application.

Output generated by statically allocated RTOS project
The output produced by the 100% statically allocated FreeRTOS reference project