CS 589-2 Embedded Systems Design

Spring 2006

T 8:30-11:00am, Speare 102 (Conference Room)

Exceptions: T 9:15-11:45am, (March 7, April 4, and May 2)

Instructor: Xiao Qin

 Speare 146, 505-5902, xqin@cs.nmt.edu

Office hours: Tuesday 2:00-4:00pm

                                General Information | Announcements | Syllabus | Lab Assignments | Projects | Lectures 

Acknowledgements: The Embedded Real-Time Systems Lab is supported in part by Intel Corporation under Grant 2005-04-070 and by a matching grant from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

Announcements

  • Final Project Presentations will be held on May 11 at 9:00am in Speare 102. 
  • Technical Reports due Friday, May 5 at 5:30pm
  • Progress Reports due Tuesday, April 4 at 5:30pm 
  • Lab assignment 2 is available. (Due Friday, March 31, 2006 ). [Posted Monday 2/20/2006]  
  • Projects webpage is now available. [Posted Tuesday 2/14/2006] 
  • The syllabus is updated. [Posted Tuesday 2/14/2006] 
  • Lab demonstration session 1: 9:00am-10:00am, Friday Feb. 3, 2006. [Posted Tuesday 1/31/2006]
  • Lab demonstration session 2: 10:00am-11:00am, Friday Feb. 3, 2006. [Posted Tuesday 1/31/2006]
  • Lab assignment 1 is available. (Due 5:30PM, Friday, Feb. 3, 2006 ). [Posted Monday 1/23/2006]
  • The webpage of lectures is launched. [Posted Monday 1/16/2006]
  • The syllabus is available. [Posted Monday 1/16/2006]
  • New Course Announcement [Posted Thursday 11/10/2005]
  • The webpage of CS 589-2 is launched. [Posted Thursday 11/10/2005]

Course Information

Embedded Systems, special-purpose computer systems, have increasingly grown in past years. Examples of embedded systems include mobile phones, PDAs, household appliances, medical equipment, avionics, and the like. The vast majority embedded systems are developed to perform special-purpose functions at a low cost, and some embedded systems have timing constraints. Embedded systems differ themselves from traditional computer systems in several ways. First, embedded systems usually execute a specific program repeatedly. Second, embedded systems have tight constraints on design metrics. Third, many embedded systems have to compute certain results in a real-time manner and continually react to changes in system environments. 

This course, which builds on students' prior knowledge of computer organization and operating systems, will address a wide range of issues of designing embedded systems. Topics 

Covered  (These topics may change)

  • Hardware/software systems and codesign
  • Embedded processor architecture and programming
  • Models of computation for embedded systems
  • Behavioral design
  • OS primitives for concurrency, timeouts, scheduling, communication and synchronization
  • Architecture selection
  • Simulation, synthesis, and verification
  • Hardware/software implementation
  • Performance analysis and optimization
  • Application-level embedded system design concepts such as basic signal processing and feedback control
  • Design methodologies and tools 
  • Design examples and case studies 

The course will be research intensive, aiming at deriving practical and achievable ground rules for embedded systems design. Graduate students are expected to do an extra project including a written report and an in-class presentation on a topic to be arranged with the instructor. The project will be optional for undergraduates. However, extra credit will be awarded to undergraduate students who have completed the project. You will be expected to collaborate with other students toward the completion of the research project related to real-time systems.  

Labs will provide students with hands-on experience with hardware and software widely used in the design of embedded systems. 

Students who have completed this course should be capable of doing the following:

  • Understand the design challenges of embedded systems

    •

  • Gain hands-on experience with hardware and software used in the design of embedded systems

  • Understand embedded processor architectures 

  • Understand embedded system application concepts

  • Write software for embedded systems

  • Design I/O and device driver interfaces to embedded processors

Prerequisite: CS 221 Computer System Organization, CS 325 Principles of Operating Systems

Office Hours: Dr. Qin will have office hours on Tuesday at 2:00-4:00p in his office (Speare 146). 

                        To get the most out of office hours, it is recommended to send an email in advance.

Textbooks:  

  • F. Vahid and T. Givargis,  "Embedded System Design," by Wiley & Sons, 2002, ISBN: 0-471-38678-2.

    • References:

    Resources

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