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

11.8 Debugging in Host-As-Target Combinations

11.8.1 Background

In this context, a host/target combination means one of two things. First, it describes schemes where the target system operating system is the same as that of the host. Second, it includes designs where the host itself is used as the target. Both configurations are described below. The first is applicable to target designs that employ operating systems based on standard desktop machines. The second describes the use of the ubiquitous PC as the target machine itself.

The host-as-target idea is not new. One very widely used general-purpose machine in earlier days was the Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) MicroVAX computer. However, nowadays the PC has become the de facto commercial standard. And, as pointed out previously, the PC is also widely used in the industrial market (though generally in a ruggedized form).

At present, the majority of PC platforms are Windows or Linux-based; macOS is rarely seen in mechatronic...