Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By : Jim Cooling
Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By: Jim Cooling

Overview of this book

From air traffic control systems to network multimedia systems, real-time systems are everywhere. The correctness of the real-time system depends on the physical instant and the logical results of the computations. This book provides an elaborate introduction to software engineering for real-time systems, including a range of activities and methods required to produce a great real-time system. The book kicks off by describing real-time systems, their applications, and their impact on software design. You will learn the concepts of software and program design, as well as the different types of programming, software errors, and software life cycles, and how a multitasking structure benefits a system design. Moving ahead, you will learn why diagrams and diagramming plays a critical role in the software development process. You will practice documenting code-related work using Unified Modeling Language (UML), and analyze and test source code in both host and target systems to understand why performance is a key design-driver in applications. Next, you will develop a design strategy to overcome critical and fault-tolerant systems, and learn the importance of documentation in system design. By the end of this book, you will have sound knowledge and skills for developing real-time embedded systems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Preface
15
Glossary of terms

11.1 An Outline of the Modern Development Process for Embedded Systems

In early microprocessor developments, hardware and software design was treated very much as an integrated activity. Little or no software testing was carried out prior to running it on the target. Most code was written in assembly language, requiring a high level of expertise to analyze and correct mistakes. Further, debugging tools were fairly primitive. Hence, coping with simultaneous hardware and software problems was an uphill task. So, it's not surprising that it could take a long time to finalize even small programs.

Economic pressures have resulted in convergence toward a particular development process. First, the hardware is treated as a separate design and development action. On new and specialized designs, such work is carried out concurrently with the application-level software design. The myth that hardware cannot be developed separately from software has been well laid to rest (except, unfortunately...