Objectives This course teaches students theory and practice involved in embedded and real-time software design. It first introduces the concepts of embedded and real-time systems and various real-time scheduling and synchronization problems. It then delves into real-time scheduling and synchronization theory such as rate monotonic scheduling, earliest deadline first scheduling, the response time analysis and the abstract ceiling protocol. It goes on investigating advanced topics in real-time systems design such as preemption threshold scheduling and the period calibration method. These algorithms lay the foundations for modern system software actively used in a wide range of devices and machines such as smartphones, network switches and even automobiles. It also covers practical topics including the Linux kernel scheduler and synchronization mechanisms.
In addition to the fundamental topics listed above, this class touches upon applications in which the above theory and practice are exploited. This will give students the deeper understanding of what they learn from the class.
Students are requested to read all the papers from the reading list in advance to the class and to present a selected subset of papers from the reading list. Students are also requested to submit a term paper.
Grading Midterm Exam 50%
Term Paper 40%
Homework 10%
