CS5785: Advanced Embedded Systems (Fall 2007)

General Information

lectures: T,H 02:00 PM-03:20 PM in MEB 3225
labs: T 03:30-05:00 in MEB 2265 -- the ECE digital lab
instructor: John Regehr
John's office hours: talk to me during lab sessions, or stop by my office MEB 3118 (also see my schedule)
TA: TBA
TA's office hours: lab time
prerequisites: Chris Myers' class, ECE/CS 3720, is the suggested prerequisite. However, 5785 is also open to students who know C and who have taken an undergrad OS course, or equivalent. If in doubt talk to John Regehr.
class mailing list: cs5785@cs.utah.edu -- everyone enrolled in the class should subscribe to this list
add/drop policy: the University is strict on this, see here for details and also keep the academic calendar in mind
incomplete policy: incompletes are a pain for everyone involved; I won't give you one unless you have a documented legal or medical emergency

Course Organization

This course is about building reliable and efficient embedded systems, with a bias towards software issues and a bias towards whole-system issues. Students complete several projects in C running on ColdFire-based embedded development boards. The course covers a number of special topics such as embedded software architectures, digital signal processing, feedback control, real-time scheduling, verification and validation, wired and wireless embedded networks, and safety-critical embedded systems.
This course assumes that you are already a C programmer (however, we do spend some time covering differences between "regular C" and "embedded C"). Additionally, students are expected to rapidly acquire the following skills:
- Writing interrupt handlers and interfacing with hardware devices.
- Using a breadboard and logic analyzer
- Learning low-level details from processor reference manuals
Grades will be assigned based on homeworks, programming assignments, exams, and class participation.

Books

Required book: Embedded Microcomputer Systems: Real Time Interfacing, 2nd Edition, by Jonathan Valvano.
Optional but recommended book: The C Programming Language (2nd Edition) by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie (CS, CE, and ECE students should own a copy of this book anyway).

AddALL is a good search engine to use if you want to minimize the amount of money you spend on books.

Homework

Students are encouraged to discuss homework solutions and programming assignments with each other. However, you must never make an electronic copy of someone's code or assignment, or type/write while looking at their code or assignment. These count as cheating.
Late homeworks will not be accepted unless you have a good excuse AND you have made arrangements with me in advance.
Submission instructions that apply to all labs and homeworks

Lab Work

Students, working in pairs, will complete a number of programming projects. They will start out easy and become more involved as the semester progresses.
For cheating purposes labs are like homeworks expect that you work in groups. It is never acceptable to look at another group's source code or make an electronic copy.
All members of a group receive the same grade for each lab.
The hardware platform for this course is a ColdFire-based board from Freescale.
The software platform for this course is ANSI C.
For more information see the lab page.
Late labs will not be accepted unless you have a good excuse AND you have made arrangements with me in advance.
Submission instructions that apply to all labs and homeworks

Course Schedule

This schedule is tentative! Please do not consider dates to be fixed (except for exams, those are fixed.)

Lectures not yet updated for Fall 2007 are marked with an asterisk.

week	date	topic	reading	slides	assignment
1	8/21	course intro		1up, 6up
	8/23	intro cont'd, pre-quiz
2	8/28	ColdFire and ARM architectures		1up, 6up	Lab 1 out
	8/30	tools and toolchains		1up, 6up
3	9/4	embedded C 1	Getting the Least Out of Your C Compiler	1up, 6up	Lab 1 due
	9/6	embedded C 2		1up, 6up	Homework 1 out
4	9/11	MISRA-C	MISRA-C 2004 (utah.edu only)	1up, 6up	Lab 2 out
	9/13	memory issues	Say No To Stack Overflow	1up, 6up
5	9/18	advanced interrupts	interrupt chapter	1up, 6up
	9/20	embedded debugging		1up, 6up	Homework 1 due
6	9/25	advanced threads		1up, 6up	Lab 2 due, Lab 3 out
	9/27	power and energy		1up, 6up
7	10/2	testing embedded systems		1up, 6up	Homework 2 out
	10/4	safety critical systems		1up, 6up
8	10/9	fall break
	10/11	fall break
9	10/16	embedded system security		1up, 6up	lab 3 due
	10/18	embedded networks		1up, 6up	Homework 2 due Friday 11:59 PM
10	10/23	exam 1
	10/25	CAN bus		1up, 6up
11	10/30	802.15.4		1up, 6up
	11/1	signal processing		1up, 6up	Homework 3 out
12	11/6	sensing and acquisition		1up, 6up
	11/8	localization -- Neal Patwari guest lecture
13	11/13	DSPs		1up, 6up
	11/15	cyclic executives		1up, 6up
14	11/20	priority-based scheduling		1up, 6up	Lab 4 out
	11/22	Thanksgiving
15	11/27	real-time 3		1up, 6up
	11/29	real-time 4		1up, 6up	Homework 3 due
16	12/4	PID control
	12/6	exam review			Lab 4 due
	12/11 (Tues) 1-3pm	exam 2

This page is maintained by John Regehr, mail me if you find a mistake or if any content is unclear.