Operating System Methods for Real-Time Applications

Principles and methods for operating system design with application to real-time, embedded systems. Concurrent programming: mechanisms and languages; design approaches and issues; run-time support (kernel). Methods for hard real-time applications. Methods for distributed systems. Programming assignments in a suitable programming language.

Welcome to the Winter 2014 term!

Lectures: Tues. and Thurs., 6:05 - 7:25 pm (18:05 - 19:25), Canal Building, room 2202

Course Materials

Course Outline (pdf)

Assignments (in PDF)

1. Assignment 1 Due Jan. 30, 2014
2. Assignment 2 Due Feb. 25, 2014
• Assignment 2 Comments (handout)
3. Assignment 3 Due Mar. 13, 2014
• Assignment 3 Comments (handout)
4. Assignment 4 Due Apr. 3, 2014
• Assignment 4 and Project Comments (handout)

Lecture Slides (in PDF)

• Introduction (handout)
• Motivation (handout)
• Real-Time Systems (handout)
• Process Model (handout)
• Kernel Design Issues (handout)
• Monitors (handout)
• PCP (handout)
• Revised wording for Ceiling Blocking (handout)
• Message Passing (handout)
• Memory Issues (uCOS & FreeRTOS) (handout)
• Clock Driven Scheduling (handout)
• Priority Driven (handout)
• Aperiodic (handout)
• Access Control (handout) updated Mar 20
• Threads (handout)
• Real-Time Languages (handout)
• Real-Time Java (handout)

Supporting Docs

• A classic paper by Stankovic (1988) about fundamental misconceptions and challenges in real-time systems is here.
• Stankovic was pressed into writing more here about the material in his 1988 paper. (This is a good site for papers! There are download links on the right side of the page ... this one has PDF and PS links.)
• Some detailed discussion of implementation issues in real-time systems, particularly processor architecture issues, can be found here (circa 1990, but easy to read).
• Leslie Lamport's hompage is here. He has made his entire collected works available!
  • For the Bakery Algorithm, see the paper "A New Solution of Dijkstra's Concurrent Programming Problem".
  • You might enjoy his paper on "Teaching Concurrency" ... how does your thought process compare?
  • Another widely respected paper from Lamport: "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System". This paper starts with the "happens before" relation (discussed in the Real-Time Systems slides), and introduces a logical clock mechanism that has been used to implement synchronization in distributed systems (we may get to this, if time permits).
• The classic Liu and Layland paper from 1973 that launched Rate Monotonic Scheduling research is here.
• A very nice overview of interrupts can be found here.
• Hoare's classic paper on Monitors is here. Note that he uses condition variables, which are discussed in class later (in threads discussion).

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Prof. Pearce <pearce@sce.carleton.ca>

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