UCR CS 122B: Advanced Embedded and Real-Time Systems, Winter 2003

Overview

Embedded systems include almost any computing system other than traditional computers. Examples include cell phones, set-top boxes, traffic-light controllers, alarm systems, automotive systems, etc. Embedded systems is one of the fastest growing in computing, and quite exciting. In addition to the catalog subjects below, we'll focus on team skills and effective communication.

Catalog description : CS 122B. Advanced Embedded and Real-Time Systems. (5) Lecture, three hours; laboratory, six hours. Prerequisite(s): CS 122A. Further exploration of state- of-the-art aspects of building embedded systems, including real-time programming, synthesis of coprocessor cores, application-specific processors, hardware and software cosimulation and codesign, low-power design, reconfigurable computing, core-based design, and platform-based methodology.

Basic information

Instructor and office hours : Frank Vahid (vahid@cs.ucr.edu) Tue 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm.
Office: Surge 328

Teaching Assistant: Greg Stitt (gstitt@cs.ucr.edu)

Lecture : Tue & Thu, 11:10 am - 12:30 pm in WAT 2141

Labs : Mon & Wed 11:10 am to 2:00 pm in Surge 173
Lab attendance is mandatory. You are expected to stay in the lab for the entire lab session, working on material related to this course. Part of your lab grade is based on attendance and participation.

Books: Required: The Art of Designing Embedded Systems, J. Ganssle, 1st ed., 1999, Newnes Press, Butterworth-Heinemann.
Required: Embedded Systems Design, Vahid/Givargis, 1st ed., 2002 J. Wiley and Sons.
Recommended: Learn Java 2 in 21 Days , Laura Lemay and Rogers Cadenhead, Sams; ISBN: 0672320614; 2nd edition (May 21, 2001), or any other Java book with a good applet introduction. Note: online Java source are also available.

Course grading: Letter grades are roughly assigned according to the usual 90/80/70/60 rule: 90% and above correspond to an A, 80% and above to a B, 70% and above to a C, 60% and above to a D, and less than 60% to an F. +/- grades will likely be given. You are not competing against one another -- you can almost all earn A's (and that has happened in the past), so work together and help each other to succeed. The grading will be based on the weighted sum of two components:

40% Lab component (excercises, presentations, assignments, attendance, participation, exams if any)
60% Lecture component 15% Homeworks/quizzes/participation
20% Midterm
25% Final
To ensure minimum competency in both the principles and practice, you must pass both components to pass the course; likewise, you must achieve at least a C- in both components to achieve a C- or better in the course.
Approximate Time Requirements: This is a five-unit course. As such, you should expect to spend the following approximate amount of time: 3 hours/week attending the lectures
6 hours/week attending the lab sessions
6 to 10 hours/week doing individual study (readings, homeworks, programming, lab preparation, etc) Please do not underestimate the time you will need to spend on this course. These are real time amounts spent on average by successful past students.

This course is the fourth in an upper-division sequence (with 120A, 120B, 122A preceding); thus, the course is designed for mature students with good study habits. We'll cover a wide variety of subjects in lectures, with students expected to study those subjects extensively outside lecture. You should come to lecture prepared not to just listen, but to think and to participate. It's a lot of work, but you'll learn a lot and hopefully have fun too.

Lecture Schedule

SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Tu Jan 07: Introduction. Engineering can improve lives. Simulating embedded systems before building them -- defining the problem is half the solution.
HK1 assigned in class, due Th 1/9
Local respirator company improves quality of life
Th Jan 09: Simulating interactive embedded systems. VHDL discrete-event simulation. Comparison with Matlab and Spice continuous simulation. SystemC. Importance of threads/processes to keep systems simple. Applets for graphical simulation.
Read ADES ch 1-3 by Tu, short quiz on Tu.
Tu Jan 14: Quiz 1 on chpts 1-3
ADES chapters 1, 2 and 3: Capability Maturity Model. Productivity enhancers. Software complexity.
Summary of software CMM
Th Jan 16: Introduction to Eblocks
Tu Jan 21: Single-chip microprocessor/FPGA platforms (e.g. Triscend)
Article: The Softening of Hardware
Th Jan 23: ADES chapter 4: Interrupts and real-time. Software bit handling using masks.
Tu Jan 28: ADES chapter 5: Firmware issues
Th Jan 30: Midterm
Tu Feb 04: Performance optimization
FYI: gprof information FYI: Karp's Turing Award lecture on theoretical computer science FYI: Amdahl's Law (from FOLDOC): (Named after Gene Amdahl) If F is the fraction of a calculation that is sequential, and (1-F) is the fraction that can be parallelised, then the maximum speedup that can be achieved by using P processors is 1/(F+(1-F)/P).
Th Feb 06: Optimization, tradeoffs, Pareto points, gprof, laser and bit reversal examples
Tu Feb 11: UCR research in hw/sw codesign; System C
Th Feb 13: Low power design
Mudge's Low Power paper
FYI: UCR work in low power cache via configurable line size (ISVLSI'03) and configurable ways (ISCA'03)
FYI: UCR research in hw/sw partitioning for low energy (D&T'02)
Tu Feb 18: Control (ESD ch 9)
Th Feb 20: Control (ESD ch 9)
Tu Feb 25: ADES Chapter 6: Hardware issues
Making the Best of those Extra Transistors
Th Feb 27: Quiz on control
ADES Chapters 7 and 8;
Testing
Tu Mar 04: More on Testing/Debug
Th Mar 06: Safety
Tu Mar 11: Misc., Review
Th Mar 13:
Final Th Mar 20 8-11a.m.

Lecture notes

(taken by one of our students)

Lab schedule

Presentations : Each day (starting the second week of lab) will include four 5 minute presentations, 2 at 11:50 and 2 at 1:00. Choose a recent article from the following or another source of embedded systems information. The class must manage this so no two people present the same article. Talks should be almost exactly 5 minutes (questions will be held until afterwards), so plan carefully. The number of presentations per student depends on the number of students we have, but all should give the same number, and you can't give your next presentation until all students have finished their current one. Your talk should justify why you chose that article (why do you think it's interesting?)

Embedded Systems Programming Magazine
Circuit Cellar Magazine (Access code will be given out in class) -- college program link

Mo Jan 06 Icebreakers, teams, Java resource search, discussion, applet programming
We Jan 08 More applet programming
Mo Jan 13 Test each others' traffic light simulator, do code inspections of each others' code, develop coding standard for class, rewrite code according to standard, class checks again. More applets.
We Jan 15 Applet-based simulator for off-ramp traffic light (Due Friday, Jan 17). Some other simulators: Site 1 Site 2 Site 3 (source code included)

Site 4

(Mo Jan 20 MLK holiday)
We Jan 22 Eblocks: design example contest, Applet-based Eblock simulator design -- due Monday, Jan 27 at 10:00 a.m.
Mo Jan 27 Single-chip microprocessor/FPGA devices (Triscend)
We Jan 29 Triscend (continued)
Mo Feb 03 Triscend (continued)
We Feb 05 Triscend (continued)
Mo Feb 10 Performance optimization using gprof and LOOAN. Instruction set simulation, cosimulation, SystemC, h/s partitioning, Mediabench, EEMBC
We Feb 12 SystemC
(Mo Feb 17 President's holiday)
We Feb 19 SystemC
Mo Feb 24 SystemC
We Feb 26 Control
Mo Mar 03 Simplescalar
We Mar 05 Testing
Mo Mar 10 Misc
We Mar 12 Misc

Lab Material

General course features and policies

Material covered : Lecture doesn't cover all required material, which also appears in the course books and may be covered only in the lab sessions.
Academic dishonesty: cheating will be punished. You can report cheating anonymously at: https://www.cs.ucr.edu/cheating/. All assignment submissions must represent your original work, the only exception being if you were told that working with a partner was acceptable.
Regrade policy: corrections must be submitted in writing and within one week of the distribution of the graded material. The entire exam/assignment may be regraded, not just the problem in question, so the grade may go up or down. Thus, think your regrade requests through carefully. Grade-database errors should also be pointed out within one week of posting.
Final grades: Per university policy, changes to your final grade will be made only in the event of a clerical error. You should not ask the instructor how far you were from a cutoff and what extra work you can do to improve the grade.
Reading: Read the current book sections before coming to lecture, and attend all lectures in their entirety. To encourage these important college study habits, we may give a few simple pop quizzes during the quarter, at any time during lecture.
A+'s may be given to students submitting all required material and possibly turning in extra (quality) material (typically lab-related) going beyond the course requirements.
Success in computer science courses requires time. A typical student needs to spend 15-20 hours per week on this course (including lecture and lab). For your own benefit, please allocate that time.

Lab guidelines

Students are required to stay the full three hours of lab session every week. You'll have in-lab exercises, presentations, discussions, and possibly exams. Work ahead or on extra course-related material if you finish early.
During lab discussion time, students should move away from their computers to the whiteboard.
Prepare for lab before arriving.
All persons in lab during scheduled lab time must be formally registered in that section. No unregistered people in the lab are allowed.
Do not bring your bike/scooter/etc. into the lab.

Homeworks

Homework 1: Assigned in class -- traffic light for freeway offramp, minimize avg wait time and backups onto freeway, read traffic data from file.
Homework 2 -- eBlock based designs.
Homework 3 -- Optimized bit reversal
Homework 4 -- Space-efficient table storage

Exams

Electronic assignment turn-in

Grades

Scores as of 03/05/03. Please check carefully. Grading scale is roughly 90/80/70/60. Scores as of 02/11/03.

Course email list

CS 122B mailing List ( send mail now or access the archive): Be sure to sign up to receive important announcements, which may be made only through the course email list. You must use your CS or EE account, or else some other UCR account, so be sure to learn how to read those accounts or at least automatically forward messages to your personal email address (just create in your home directory a file named ".forward" containing your personal email address).

Additional Resources

Embedded Systems Programming Magazine

Circuit Cellar Magazine