Spring 2005

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Stevens Institute of Technology
CPE 800C
Real-Time and Embedded System
Lecture 1: Introduction
Dr. Yan Meng
http://www.ece.stevens-tech.edu/~ymeng/
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Course Introduction
Instructor: Yan Meng
Office: Burchard 215
Phone: 201-216-5496
Email: ymeng1@stevens.edu
Office hour: Thursday 4:00pm-6:00pm
Homework
Must be typed or printed hardcopy (i.e., not handwritten)
Email is OK with MS/Office or program attachments
Include the problem statement with solution. Keep a copy of your
hardcopy or electronic homework (if probably will not be returned)
If you submit homework as an email attachment, make sure your name
appears in the file
Homework will be due at the beginning of the class 1 after it is asigned
Problem solutions will be posted on-line LATE HOMEWORK WILL
NOT BE ACCEPTED AFTER THE SOLUTION IS POSTED
Grading
Homework 20% project 20% midterm 30% final 30%
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Course Introduction (Contd)
Course Description
Cover various fundamental issues as well as practical
development in the area of real-time embedded systems
Required Textbook
J ane W. S. Liu, Real-Time Systems, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
2000, ISBN: 0-13-099651-3.
Referenced books
Qing Li, Real-Time Concepts for Embedded Systems, CMP
Books, 2003, ISBN 1-57820-124-1.
Frank Vahid, Tony Givargis, Embedded System Design: A
Unified Hardware/Software Introduction, J ohn Wiley &
Sons, 2002, ISBN 0-471-38678-2.
Wayne Wolf, Computers as Components: Principles of
Embedded Computing System Design, Morgan Kaufman,
2001.
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Course Topics
Introduction of Real-Time Embedded Systems
Real-Time Operating Systems
Embedded Software Programming
Scheduling and Synchronization
Hardware/Software Co-Design
Real-Time Communication
Distributed Embedded Systems
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Todays Lecture
What are real-time embedded system?
Design technology of RT embedded system
Choose the right processor
Software development of RT embedded system
Real-time vs. general software
Overview of real-time operating system
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Embedded System
Embedded systems are
computing systems with
tightly coupled hardware and
software integration, that are
designed to perform a
dedicated function. The
word embedded reflects the
fact that these systems are
usually an integral part of a
larger system, known as the
embedding system. Multiple
embedded systems can
coexist in an embedding
system
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Embedded Systems Examples
Sonys Aibo Sonicare toothbrush
Palm Vx Handheld Garmin SreetPilot GPS
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-Time Systems
Definition
Real-time systems are defined as those systems in
which the overall correctness of the system depends
on both the functional correctness and the timing
correctness. The timing correctness is at least as
important as the functional correctness
Characteristics:
Provide well-timed computation
Deadlines, jitters, periodicity
Temporal dependency
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hard vs. Soft Real-time Systems
Hard real-time system
Must meet deadlines with a near-zero degree of flexibility
The deadline must be met, or catastrophes occur ( cost is
extremely high and can involve human lives)
The computation results obtained after the deadline have either
zero-level of usefulness or have a high rate of depreciation
Soft real-time system
Must meet its deadlines but with a degree of flexibility
The deadlines can contain varying levels of tolerance, average
timing deadlines, and even statistical distribution of response
times with different degrees of acceptability
A missed deadline does not result in system failure, but costs can
rise in proportion to delay, depending on the application
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-Time Embedded System
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-time Embedded Systems
Examples
Electric toothbrush,
pacemaker
Cellular phones
Autonomous mobile
robots
GPS receivers,
Internet
And more
Plant sensor actuator
Control-raw
computation
A/D
A/D
D/A
Reference
input
Controller
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Why RT Embedded System are Different?
Dedicated to specific tasks
Be supported by a wide array of processors, and
processor architectures
Cost sensitive
Real-time constraints
Real-time operating system
Power constraints
Must operate under severe environment conditions
Far fewer resources than desktop systems
Store all the object code in ROM
Require specialized tools and methods to be efficiently
designed
Have dedicated debugging circuitry
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Requirements for RT Embedded Systems
NRE cost (nonrecurring engineering cost) one-time monetary cost
of designing the system
Unit cost monetary cost of manufacturing each copy of the system
Size physical space required by the system (bytes in SW,
gates/transistors in HW)
Performance execution time
Power consumption - power consumed by the system
Flexibility ability to change the functionality without incurring heavy
NRE cost
Time-to-prototype time needed to build a working version of the
system
Time-to-market time required to develop a system to the point that
it can be released and sold to customers.
Maintainability ability to modify the system after its initial release
Correctness functional and timely
Safety probability that the system will not cause harm
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-Time Embedded System
Design technology
Hardware
(processor, memory,
I/O, bus, etc)
Software
(OS, libraries,
Applications, GUI, etc)
Design process
(system/behavioral/RT
/logic specification,
implementation,
Testing, etc.)
Tool chain
(analysis, compiler,
debugging, integration,
etc.)
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
RT Embedded System Design Cycle
Seven phases
Product specification
Partitioning of the design into its software and hardware
components
Iteration and refinement of the partitioning
Independent hardware and software design tasks
Integration of the hardware and software components
Product testing and release
On-going maintenance and upgrading
Notes:
The real world RT embedded system design process is not as
simple as above. A considerable amount of iteration and
optimization occurs within phases and between phases.
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hardware Design - Embedded Processors
Processors in PC
General-purpose or universal processors
Provide a full scale of features and a wide spectrum of
functionalities
Designed for a variety of applications
Large power consumption, heat production and size
Embedded Processors
Special purpose processors
Designed for a specific class of application
Focus on size, power consumption, price, and performance
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Choosing the Right Embedded Processor
Cost of
Goods
Time to
Market
Real-time
Constraints
Performance
Size
Power
Consumption
Legacy
Code
Support
?
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Choosing the Right Embedded Processor
(Contd)
Is it available in a suitable implementation?
Cost-sensitive projects might require an off-the-shelf, highly
integrated part
High-performance applications might require gate-to-gate
delays that are only practical when the entire design is
fabricated on a single chip
Is it capable of sufficient performance?
The bottlenecks that limit performance often have less to
do with computational power than with the fitbetween the
architecture and the devices more demanding tasks
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Choosing the Right Embedded Processor
(Contd)
Is it supported by an appropriate operating system?
In order to take an advantage of commercial RTOS, such
as VxWorks or pSOS from Wind River System, the
processors need have the support from those RTOS
Is it supported by appropriate and adequate tools?
Good tools are critical to project success
At a minimum, youll need a good cross-compiler and good
debugging support
In many situations, youll need far more, such as in-circuit
emulators (ICE), simulators, and so on
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Processors in RT Embedded System
Microprocessor-based system
A CPU without any additional peripheral or support devices
Microcontroller-based system
A CPU with a minimum complement of external parts, such
as memory, I/O, and clock, etc.
System-on-Chip system
Multiple CPUs and multiple peripheral devices on a single
silicon chip
Individual elements are not designed from scratch but are
licensed (in the form of synthesizable VHDL or Verilog
specifications) from various IC design houses
The elements are connected with custom inter-connect
logic
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hardware/Software Partitioning
Designing the hardware for an embedded system is
more than just selecting the right processor and gluing it
to a few peripherals.
The partitioning decision is a complex optimization
problem, which is difficult due to the conflicting
requirements of the system
The implement of an algorithm design can be as a
combination of hardware components and software
components
Purely in software the CPU without the FPU
Purely in hardware the dedicated modem chip
In some combination the video card
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hardware/Software Integration
Must have special tools and methods to manage the
complexity
An exercise in debugging and discovery
The Holy Grail of embedded system design is to
combine the first hardware prototype, the application
software, the drive code, and the operating system
software together with a pinch of optimism and to have
the design work perfectly out of the chute unlikely
scenario in real world
The real-time nature of embedded systems leads to
highly complex, nondeterministic behavior that can only
be analyzed as it occurs
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Product Testing and Releasing
Product testing takes on special significance when the
performance of the embedded system has life or death
consequences attached (such as a nuclear power
generating stations emergency system)
Testing is more than making sure the software doesnt
crash at a critical moment
Because embedded systems usually have extremely
tight design margins to meet cost goals, testing must
determine whether the system is performing close to its
optimal capabilities
Memory leaks problem for embedded system running
continuously for a long time is potentially disastrous
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Maintenance and Upgrading
The majority of embedded system designers
(around 60%) maintain and upgrade existing
products, rather than design new products
Those engineers who maintain and upgrade
the existing systems are usually not the
original designers
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
SW Development for Embedded Systems
To write the control
software for a smart washer
initialize
read keypad or control
knob
read sensors
take an action
System current state
state transition diagram
external triggers via
polling or ISR
Would you like to write an
auto landing software for
Boeing 787?
initialization
external trigger?
Take actions
Change system state
ISR: to set/clear
events
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
SW Development for Embedded Systems
Never-ending in a single control loop
Single execution threat and one address space
Event triggering and state transitions
Small memory footprint
What are missing in the example solution:
no concurrency (real-world events occur in parallel)
no explicit timing control (lets add a timer)
difficult to develop and maintain large embedded
systems verifiable, reusable, and maintainable
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-Time vs. General Software
Multi-tasking for concurrent events
Machine dependence and portability
Software abstraction, modular design
Information hiding, OO, separate compilation, reusable
A sorting procedure function, input, output specification
Control timing
Resource constraints and sharing
CPU time, stack, memory, and bandwidth
Scheduling
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-time vs. General Software (Contd)
Portability and configuration management
Windows and its applications
Registry and hardware abstraction
Maintenance and upgrade
Component reuse and integration
Use DLLs in embedded systems?
DLL(dynamic link library) is a small application thats called by
a large application to provide a service or set of instruction.
The DLL is designed to save space by placing commonly
used routines in a DLL file, rather than placing copies of all of
the routines in each individual program.
Profiling: resource usage in a specific platform for each
component
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Timing Constraints and Characteristics
An example: 2 actions and 1 event
A1 must be done at least every 10ms, and takes
1ms
A2 must be completed with 5ms when E occurs
and takes 2ms
E must be detected by polling and is detectable
for at least 0.5 ms
E would not occur twice within 50 ms
polling of E takes 0.01ms
a passive clock with a tick size 0.1ms
0.5ms
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Timing Constraints and Characteristics
Predicting and controlling timing and events
Timing relationship: (can you guarantee it?)
predictable actions in response to external stimuli
deadline (absolute or relative), and jitter (the period
frequency displacement of the signal from its ideal location)
Instruments play in a band
miss a note or timing
Difficult to control timing
all players of an interactive game in Internet see the actions
at the same time
Sequence, order, and race condition ( when the state of a
resource depends on timing factors that are not predictable)
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Timing Constraints and Multi-threading
Given input x
1
at time t
1
, produce output y
1
at
time t
2
Non-deterministic operation, Time-dependent
behavior, and race condition
difficult to model, analyze, test, and re-produce.
Example: NASA Pathfinder spacecraft
Total system resets in Mars Pathfinder
An overrun of data collection task
a priority inversion in mutex semaphore
failure of communication task
a system reset.
Took 18 hours to reproduce the failure
in a lab replica the problem became
obvious and a fix was installed
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Challenges in Embedded Sys. Development
To ensure safety (security) for critical applications
Software development process and Certification
We dont know how safe a software is
Use of standard processes and compliance with pre-determined
objectives to help avoid the common pitfalls of software
development
Traceability
Requirements
Test/verification Implementation
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Embedded System Development
Need a real-time (embedded) operating system ?
Need a development and test environment ?
Use the host to edit, compile, and build application programs, and
configure the target
At the target embedded system, use tools to load, execute,
debug, and monitor (performance and timing)
Ethernet
Simulated signal source
(Workstation, embedded
system development tools)
(workstation, interface cards),
& test harness
Development workstation Embedded systems
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Real-Time Operating System
Functions:
task management,
scheduling, dispatcher
communication (pipe, queue)
synchronization (semaphore, event)
memory management
time management
device driver
interrupt service
Interrupt
dispatch
Interrupt
service
Time service &
events
Services (create thread,
sleep, notify, send,)
Scheduling
&
dispatcher
External
interrupt
System calls
(trap)
Timer
interrupt
kernel
Task
execution
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Tornado Development Environment
Target
Host
Target
server
Target agent
application
vxWork
Editor,
Compiler
WindSh
CrossWind
Browser
WindConfig
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Booting a Target in a Cross-Development
Environment
When power-up, execute boot ROM code at the target
load vxWorks (RTOS) or applications into the target memory (via
network)
start executing vxWorks
boot parameters (network address, directory . )
Typically, there is a generic boot ROM (firmware, monitor, etc)
Need to write the vxWorks boot ROM into flash memory
vxWorks is a configurable RTOS
configure vxWorks with hardware-dependent drivers for the target
board (BSP --- board-supporting package)
Once vxWorks is executing
start a target server at the host to manage target resources
use the command shell and other tools
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Target Server
The target server (tgtsvr) manages the interactions with the
target
communication channel
symbol table for the target
Tools use WTX (Wind River Tool Exchange) protocol to
communicate with the target server
target server
Debug agent
vxWorks
network-independent
communication
WindSh (shell)
WindView
(timing monitor)
CrssWind
(debugger)
Registry
Daemon
License
management
Custom-built
tool
WTX
protocol
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Tornado Target Environment
Spring 2005
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stevens Institute of Technology
Tornado Host Environment (Server)