Instructor

Textbook: Real-Time Systems by Jane Liu.

Course prerequisites: CSC 451 or CSC 501 (Operating Systems). Helpful: CSC 114 (Intro to C++), CSC 224 (Applied Discrete Mathematics), CSC 234 (Computer Organization & Assembly Language), and MA 121 (Calculus).

Course purpose: This class prepares you to understand advanced research issues in real-time systems. You will be introduced to schedulability theory, resource handling, timing analysis, real-time operating systems, real-time system design, embedded architectures, soft real-time systems, middleware, qualty-of-service, power-awareness, distributed real-time systems and sensor networks. The material will cover numerous research papers besides the textbook. Current research will be presented by students and discussed to give a better understanding of open issues in real-time systems.

Course objectives: By the end of the course, you should be able to do the following things:

• Schedulability. To analyze the feasibility of a set of independent tasks; to explain resource policies for dependent tasks; to derive schedules; to simulate executions; to critique different implementation choices.
• Timing Analysis. To differentiate between various timing analysis techniques; to be aware of the challenges and the impact of timing assessment in real-time systems; to explain the merrits and the analytical methodology of static/analytical approaches; to understand the complementary nature of dynamic/experimental approaches; to derive novel techniques for timing analysis.
• Systems design, implementation and analysis. To recite required real-time services for operating systems; to design, implement and evaluate such services; to comprehend formal methods design approaches and utilize design tools; to formally model real-time systems; to understand the limits of formal designs on one side and non-formal approaches on the other side; the comprehend the challenges in distributed real-time systems; to incorporate protocol extensions into existing systems protocols.
• Soft real-time. To reiterate the characteristics of soft real-time systems; to identify problems as hard vs. soft RT; to model quality-of-service properties in system design; to derive predicatbility guaratees under QoS assumptions; to design and implement middleware protocols in support of soft RT.
• Power-Aware Systems. To characterize the impact of power consumption on embedded resources; to identify systems level in support of energy conservation; to design and implement protocols that preserve power; to evaluate such systems; to criticize trends in voltage scaling and leakage.