Why Your Embedded Device needs an Operating System - Webinar By EITAGlobal

Website http://bit.ly/1nYWTq4 | Edit Freely

Category Operating System; business online teaching, Embedded Device;

Deadline: September 08, 2014 | Date: September 09, 2014

Venue/Country: ONLINE, U.S.A

Updated: 2014-08-11 16:16:20 (GMT+9)

Call For Papers - CFP

We'll examine the polling loop model and analyze its shortcomings. Then we'll look at asynchronous hardware interrupts and see that they are the source of much of the complexity of device-based software. The real-time operating system will be introduced as a way to abstract out the inherent complexity of asynchronous interrupts. We'll then dive into the characteristics and features of operating systems: the tasking model, the scheduler, inter-task communication and synchronization, timing, and of course interrupt handling. We'll consider the problems of sharing resources among multiple tasks. We'll discuss the distinction between an operating system and a kernel. FreeRTOS, a small Open Source kernel, will serve as the model for this entire section.

Next we'll explore design considerations for an OS-based system. How to partition the problem into tasks. We'll look at the idea of dynamic task creation, that is, creating and destroying tasks while the system is running. Solving the resource sharing problem sometimes introduces problems of its own. We'll look at two of these problems, priority inversion and deadly embrace, and assess tech-niques for dealing with them.

Finally, we'll survey some other popular operating systems, both Open Source and pro-prietary, to see where they fit in the grand scheme of things.

Why should you attend: If you're designing and building embedded devices, you really should consider basing the firmware on a real-time operating system (RTOS). Especially in this age of "the Internet of Things", the need for low latency, and in many cases deterministic, response becomes ever more important. Polling loops just can't keep up. The operating system model has a number of advantages. It tends to make systems more modular and reliable. Code breaks down into smaller, more comprehensible units. It scales well. The ultimate result is faster, more efficient software development.

An operating system isn't as mysterious as you might think. It is based on relatively straightforward design principles. It may take some effort to master programming for an OS, but once you do you'll wonder why you wasted time coding polling loops. And operating systems don't always require excessive resources either. Free RTOS, for example, will even run on PIC microcontrollers.

Areas Covered in the Session:

Background

Nature of Device Programming

Polling Loop

What is an interrupt

Introducing Multi-tasking Operating Systems

What is a task?

Inter-task Communication and Synchronization

Managing Time

Handling Interrupts

Designing with a Multi-tasking OS

Task Partitioning

Dynamically Creating Tasks

Problems with Solving the Resource Sharing Problem

Survey of Multi-tasking Operating Systems

Open Source

"Kind of" Open Source

Commercial/Proprietary

Who Will Benefit:

Embedded engineer

Software engineer

Firmware engineer

System architect

Engineering Manager

Speaker Profile:

Doug Abbott is the principal of Intellimetrix, a consulting firm in Silver City, NM, specializing in hardware and software for industrial and scientific data acquisition and embedded product applications. Among his past and present clients are Agilent Technologies, Tektronix, Sandia National Laboratory and numerous smaller high-tech companies in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Abbott has over thirty five years’ experience in various aspects of computer hardware and software design and has been an independent consultant for about twenty years. Prior to founding Intellimetrix, he managed software devel-opment for DSP Technology, Inc, a leading supplier of high-speed instrumentation.

Doug is also a popular instructor and seminar leader, teaching classes on the Linux operating system and real-time programming in general. He has taught the tech-niques of Linux, embedded programming and multi-tasking operating systems to hundreds of professional engineers. He is the author of three books:

Embedded Linux Development using Eclipse

Linux for Embedded and Real-time Applications, 3nd ed.

The PCI Bus Demystified, 2nd ed.