12 units
This practical, hands-on course introduces the various building blocks and underlying scientific and engineering principles behind embedded real-time systems. The course covers the integrated hardware and software aspects of embedded processor architectures, along with advanced topics such as real-time, resource/device and memory management. Students can expect to learn how to program with the embedded architecture that is ubiquitous in cell-phones, portable gaming devices, robots, PDAs, etc. Students will then go on to learn and apply real-time principles that are used to drive critical embedded systems like automobiles, avionics, medical equipment, the Mars rover, etc. Topics covered include embedded architectures (building up to modern 16/32/64-bit embedded processors); interaction with devices (buses, memory architectures, memory management, device drivers); concurrency (software and hardware interrupts, timers); real-time principles (multi-tasking, scheduling, synchronization); implementation trade-offs, profiling and code optimization (for performance and memory); embedded software (exception handling, loading, mode-switching, programming embedded systems). Through a series of laboratory exercises with state-of-the-art embedded processors and industry-strength development tools, students will acquire skills in the design/implementation/debugging of core embedded real-time functionality.
Prerequisites: 18-240 and 18-213
Anti-requisites: 18-342 and 18-348
Prerequisite for: 18-447, 18-540, 18-545, 18-578, 18-649, 18-745, 18-748, 18-842, 18-842G, 18-842PP, 18-848C
Last updated on January 31, 2012
Computer Hardware
Breadth, Coverage, Depth
F12
F11, F10, F08, F07, F05, F04, F01
Please note that the course history information is incomplete and/or may reflect different courses offered under the same course number.