CS 773 Real-Time Systems Design and Development

Spring 2008

Thursday 4.30 - 7.10 P.M.
Innovation Hall 136

Prerequisites: Graduate-level Operating Systems (CS 571) and at least undergraduate-level Data Structures/Algorithms Courses. On the Operating Systems side, the students should be familiar with basic concepts such as processes, scheduling, semaphores, interrupts, memory management. If in doubt, please contact the instructor.

Book: Real-Time Systems, Jane W. S. Liu. Prentice-Hall, 2000, 624 pp., ISBN 0-13-099651-3.
This is the main textbook; in addition, articles from recent issues of journals and conference proceedings will be made available in class.
Hard Real-Time Computing Systems (by G. Buttazzo, Springer, 2005) and Soft Real-Time Systems (by G. Buttazzo et al., Springer, 2005) are recommended books that provide in-depth coverage of some of the topics that will be discussed in class.

Office Hours: Thursday 7:20 PM – 8:20 PM, Friday 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM, and by appointment.

Description: With the growing emphasis on timing guarantees, Real-Time technologies are increasingly marking the design and operation of various computer and communication systems, in the areas of embedded systems, avionics, command-and-control, multimedia networking, e-commerce and mobile computing, to name a few. Recent initiatives to incorporate Real-Time extensions to widely used Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems justify and strengthen its status as a major enabling technology. This course is intended to provide the background and skills needed to design, analyze and develop real-time applications. Real-time scheduling theory and its implications for design of real-time applications will receive special emphasis. Through the paper presentations and discussions, the students will be exposed to the latest research trends in the area. As such, the course is particularly suitable for Ph.D. students and advanced M.S. students.

Topics:

Key concepts in Real-Time Computing
Real-Time task models and performance metrics
Scheduling and Resource Management
Real-Time Communication, Quality-of-Service issues
Power-Aware Real-time Systems
Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Systems
Multiprocessors and Distributed Systems
Real-Time Operating Systems

Grading:

Written examination (in-class) 30%
Term Project 35%
Paper Presentations 25%
Class Participation and Paper Summaries 10%

Paper Presentations: During the first part of the course, the instructor will present the fundamentals of Real-Time computing and main research problems of the area. In the second part, the students will present articles from recent conference/workshop proceedings and journals. A list of suggested papers will be provided, however, the student suggestions are welcome. The (in-class) presentations will include a critical evaluation and discussion of the paper. The students will be required to read, and submit a brief summary/evaluation of the papers presented in class.

Term Project: Each student is expected to complete a term project and submit a research paper/report by the end of the term. Again, a list of potential projects will be provided; but the students may define their own project as long as the project has sufficient scope/complexity and the instructor's approval is obtained. A term project may be in any of the following forms:

Theoretical investigation, such as a detailed schedulability analysis
Critical survey of existing literature in a well-defined Real-Time research area
Simulation-based performance evaluation
OS-level implementation involving real-time services, such as implementation of a real-time thread library

No early exams will be given and make-up exams are strongly discouraged. GMU Honor Code will be strictly enforced. We reserve the right to use MOSS to detect plagiarism. Violations of GMU Honor Code will result in an F.

Course Web Page: http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~aydin/cs773