DSP/BIOS II is Texas Instruments real time embedded kernel for the TMS320C5000™ and TMS320C6000™ Digital Signal Processors (DSP). Understanding how to build applications using DSP/BIOS II requires adopting a multi-threaded design paradigm that at first seems foreign for new users of DSPs and veteran DSP developers alike. However, once understood, designing DSP/BIOS II applications becomes straightforward and you will find developing applications easier to design, debug, maintain, and extend. A real-time kernel such as DSP/BIOS II helps to factor the problem and facilitate a robust design that is easily maintainable. Traditionally, DSP applications were very simple, typically using a single program loop to manage the required processing. Over time, DSP applications began to require concurrent processing, as applications demanded the DSP to perform more functions. Applications now typically require the DSP to do several things at once and at different rates. In addition, DSP applications typically change over time requiring support for additional or modified features. Building modern DSP applications using traditional program loop paradigms is very challenging, difficult to maintain, and even more difficult to extend. Using the DSP/BIOS II real time kernel offers developers the foundation to build modern applications from simple to complex multi-threaded and multi-rate applications. Building modern DSP applications requires adopting a design paradigm, which includes preemptive, event-driven multi-threaded. This requires understanding how to architect applications using one or more execution threads rather than processing loops. DSP/BIOS II provides three distinct classes of execution threads with different execution, preemption, and suspension characteristics to build applications on. In support of these threads are several additional kernel objects that provide device-independent I/O, interthread communication and synchronization, and other real time services. This paper addresses how to get started building DSP applications using DSP/BIOS II. The primary focus is to understand the multi-threaded design approach using DSP/BIOS II components. This includes organizing and structuring an application around DSP/BIOS II execution threads.