Gabriele Manduchi - Böcker

This book aims to provide readers with hands-on knowledge about real-time operating systems and their possible application in the embedded systems domain to streamline, simplify, and make software development more efficient, without requiring any significant previous experience with them. A thorough presentation of operating system-based programming techniques is especially important because they enjoy an ever-increasing popularity in the embedded systems domain but are often misunderstood, because they still lack comprehensive support in the scientific and technical literature.The book analyzes in detail three realistic case studies of increasing complexity, of which the first one requires only a commonly available PC or laptop, while the other two involve low-cost, open-source hardware platforms readily available to the majority of readers. They serve as starting points and running examples while introducing theoretical concepts, as well as real-time operating systems’ operations and interfaces. A set of exercises and their solutions completes the book, to enable readers to self-assess their knowledge as they proceed. Moreover, the source code developed for the case studies is freely available for download and further experimentation.Provides hands-on description of the most important real-time operating system conceptsIncludes case studies of practical interest to experiment with while reading the bookProvides an in-depth, but accessible presentation of real-time scheduling theoryA balanced mix of operating system theory, exercises, and case studies in a single bookThe use cases involve inexpensive hardware boards readily available on the marketTogether, the topics covered by this book help embedded system designers understand benefits and shortcomings of real-time operating systems and then decide whether it may be worth adopting one of them for their next project instead of relying on more traditional, but less powerful, techniques. At the same time, students will acquire all the knowledge and skills they need to take part in real-world embedded software development without sacrificing a proper theoretical foundation. In this context, the case studies play the crucial role of underlining the strong relationship between operating system theory and application, along with the relevance of theoretical concept in day-to-day project design and implementation.

This book aims to provide readers with hands-on knowledge about real-time operating systems and their possible application in the embedded systems domain to streamline, simplify, and make software development more efficient, without requiring any significant previous experience with them. A thorough presentation of operating system-based programming techniques is especially important because they enjoy an ever-increasing popularity in the embedded systems domain but are often misunderstood, because they still lack comprehensive support in the scientific and technical literature.The book analyzes in detail three realistic case studies of increasing complexity, of which the first one requires only a commonly available PC or laptop, while the other two involve low-cost, open-source hardware platforms readily available to the majority of readers. They serve as starting points and running examples while introducing theoretical concepts, as well as real-time operating systems’ operations and interfaces. A set of exercises and their solutions completes the book, to enable readers to self-assess their knowledge as they proceed. Moreover, the source code developed for the case studies is freely available for download and further experimentation.Provides hands-on description of the most important real-time operating system conceptsIncludes case studies of practical interest to experiment with while reading the bookProvides an in-depth, but accessible presentation of real-time scheduling theoryA balanced mix of operating system theory, exercises, and case studies in a single bookThe use cases involve inexpensive hardware boards readily available on the marketTogether, the topics covered by this book help embedded system designers understand benefits and shortcomings of real-time operating systems and then decide whether it may be worth adopting one of them for their next project instead of relying on more traditional, but less powerful, techniques. At the same time, students will acquire all the knowledge and skills they need to take part in real-world embedded software development without sacrificing a proper theoretical foundation. In this context, the case studies play the crucial role of underlining the strong relationship between operating system theory and application, along with the relevance of theoretical concept in day-to-day project design and implementation.

From the Foreword: "…the presentation of real-time scheduling is probably the best in terms of clarity I have ever read in the professional literature. Easy to understand, which is important for busy professionals keen to acquire (or refresh) new knowledge without being bogged down in a convoluted narrative and an excessive detail overload. The authors managed to largely avoid theoretical-only presentation of the subject, which frequently affects books on operating systems. … an indispensable [resource] to gain a thorough understanding of the real-time systems from the operating systems perspective, and to stay up to date with the recent trends and actual developments of the open-source real-time operating systems."—Richard Zurawski, ISA Group, San Francisco, California, USAReal-time embedded systems are integral to the global technological and social space, but references still rarely offer professionals the sufficient mix of theory and practical examples required to meet intensive economic, safety, and other demands on system development. Similarly, instructors have lacked a resource to help students fully understand the field. The information was out there, though often at the abstract level, fragmented and scattered throughout literature from different engineering disciplines and computing sciences. Accounting for readers’ varying practical needs and experience levels, Real Time Embedded Systems: Open-Source Operating Systems Perspective offers a holistic overview from the operating-systems perspective. It provides a long-awaited reference on real-time operating systems and their almost boundless application potential in the embedded system domain. Balancing the already abundant coverage of operating systems with the largely ignored real-time aspects, or "physicality," the authors analyze several realistic case studies to introduce vital theoretical material. They also discuss popular open-source operating systems—Linux and FreRTOS, in particular—to help embedded-system designers identify the benefits and weaknesses in deciding whether or not to adopt more traditional, less powerful, techniques for a project.

From the Foreword: "…the presentation of real-time scheduling is probably the best in terms of clarity I have ever read in the professional literature. Easy to understand, which is important for busy professionals keen to acquire (or refresh) new knowledge without being bogged down in a convoluted narrative and an excessive detail overload. The authors managed to largely avoid theoretical-only presentation of the subject, which frequently affects books on operating systems. … an indispensable [resource] to gain a thorough understanding of the real-time systems from the operating systems perspective, and to stay up to date with the recent trends and actual developments of the open-source real-time operating systems."—Richard Zurawski, ISA Group, San Francisco, California, USAReal-time embedded systems are integral to the global technological and social space, but references still rarely offer professionals the sufficient mix of theory and practical examples required to meet intensive economic, safety, and other demands on system development. Similarly, instructors have lacked a resource to help students fully understand the field. The information was out there, though often at the abstract level, fragmented and scattered throughout literature from different engineering disciplines and computing sciences. Accounting for readers’ varying practical needs and experience levels, Real Time Embedded Systems: Open-Source Operating Systems Perspective offers a holistic overview from the operating-systems perspective. It provides a long-awaited reference on real-time operating systems and their almost boundless application potential in the embedded system domain. Balancing the already abundant coverage of operating systems with the largely ignored real-time aspects, or "physicality," the authors analyze several realistic case studies to introduce vital theoretical material. They also discuss popular open-source operating systems—Linux and FreRTOS, in particular—to help embedded-system designers identify the benefits and weaknesses in deciding whether or not to adopt more traditional, less powerful, techniques for a project.

This is a book about a code and about coding. The code is a case study which has been used to teachcourses in e-Science atthe Australian NationalUniv- sity since 2001. Students learn advanced programming skills and techniques TM in the Java language. Above all, they learn to apply useful object-oriented design patterns as they progressively refactor and enhance the software. We think our case study,EScope, is as close to real life as you can get! It is a smaller version of a networked, graphical, waveform browser which is used in the control rooms of fusion energy experiments around the world. It is quintessential “e-Science” in the sense of e-Science being “computer science and information technology in the service of science”. It is not, speci?cally, “Grid-enabled”, but we develop it in a way that will facilitate its deployment onto the Grid. The standard version ofEScope interfaces with a specialised database for waveforms, and related data, known asMDSplus. On the acc- panying CD, we have provided you with software which will enable you to installMDSplus,EScope and sample data ?les onto Windows or Linux c- puters. There is much additional software including many versions of the case study as it gets built up and progressively refactored using design patterns. There will be a home web-site for this book which will contain up-to-date information about the software and other aspects of the case study.