Product Description

Master the fundamental concepts of real-time embedded system programming and jumpstart your embedded projects with effective design and implementation practices. This book bridges the gap between higher-level abstract modeling concepts and the lower-level programming aspects of embedded systems development. You gain a solid understanding of real-time embedded systems with detailed practical examples and industry wisdom on key concepts, design processes, and the available tools and methods.

Delve into the details of real-time programming so you can develop a working knowledge of the common design patterns and program structures of real-time operating systems (RTOS). The objects and services that are a part of most RTOS kernels are described and real-time system design is explored in detail. You learn how to decompose an application into units and how to combine these units with other objects and services to create standard building blocks. A rich set of ready-to-use, embedded design "building blocks" is also supplied to accelerate your development efforts and increase your productivity.

Experienced developers new to embedded systems and engineering or computer science students will both appreciate the careful balance between theory, illustrations, and practical discussions. Hard-won insights and experiences shed new light on application development, common design problems, and solutions in the embedded space. Technical managers active in software design reviews of real-time embedded systems will find this a valuable reference to the design and implementation phases.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243642 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 294 pages

About the Author
Qing Li is a senior architect at Blue Coat Systems, Inc. leading the design and development efforts of the next-generation IPv6 enabled secure proxy appliances. Qing holds multiple US patents. Qing is a contributing author of the book titled. He is the author of the embedded systems development book titled "Real-Time Concepts for Embedded Systems" published in April 2003.

Customer Reviews

A Must for Beginners, and Worth It For Hot Shots Too
When I first started reading this work, it seemed decidedly to be for beginners only. I was pleasantly surprised however, how many new concepts and ideas I learned by the time I completed it. I found the "points to remember" and Chapters 11, 13-16 to be particularly useful because they highlight the pitfalls that I've seen even the most seasoned RTOSers fall into. I ended up buying the book for all my firmware developers and made the above mentioned sections mandatory reading for them. Although I have read several books on real time this is definitely the most complete because it references the real time concepts in the context of a real live OS - VxWorx. The information is presented in such a way that it can easily be applied to any RTOS such as QNX, InTime, MsCE, and MuOS. All my firmware new hires are given this book on the first day of work, and they can't start coding until they've finished it.

A Really Good Explanation of Real Time Issues
"Real-Time Concepts" is a book that tackles one of the most difficult subject areas of embedded systems programming. Bugs that are introduced because of problems with the behavior of a real-time system can be extremely subtle and difficult to correct. These bugs can also have disasterous effects. Even Computer Science students who take an Operating Systems class probably never deal with a Real Time Operating System.

In this book, the authors attempt to explain the concepts of real time programming. In my opinion, they generally succeed at their task. They keep the code examples to a bare minimum, which I think is a good strategy, because code examples can often obscure a concept, rather than explain it.

If the book has a weakness, I think that it is the introductory sections. The first 50 pages or so cover no new ground and have been covered much more extensively by other authors in the CMP Books series. However, the book really hits its stride at Chapter 4, "Introduction to Real Time Operating Systems". From then on, the book teaches you what you will need to know to be able to design a real-time system.

Of particular note, I was impressed with the authors' explanation of Rate Monotonic Analysis (RMA). This is one of the more difficult to understand concepts and the authors explained it in a way that the novice reader could understand it.

In summary, "Real-Time Concepts" should be required reading for anyone entering the field of embedded systems design. For the CS professional who may be new to embedded systems, investing the time to read this book before you start to code is time well-spent. Thid book should be part of every Embedded Systems professional's bookshelf.

Good VxWorks-centric Intro to Real Time OS
This book is a good introduction to readers who are beginners in the world of embedded programming and real-time operating systems. A real-time OS facilitates the creation of real-time systems, but does not guarantee that they are real-time. Nor does an RTOS necessarily have high throughput. Instead, they enable, through specialized scheduling algorithms and deterministic behavior, the guarantee that system deadlines can be met. Thus a real-time OS is valued more for how quickly it can respond to an event than for the total amount of work it can do.
This book, written by a senior architect at Wind River Systems, is very VxWorks centric. This is OK, since VxWorks is one of the better commercial real-time operating systems out there, having been on the scene in various forms since 1983. This book will introduce you to all of the terminology you will need to be familiar with before you write code that uses VxWorks. I highly recommend it for anybody who is or is planning to get involved in embedded systems. Since so many robot designers end up programming with VxWorks, I highly recommend it especially to them. The concepts of scheduling, tasks, semaphores, queues, exceptions, and timers are all covered very well, even for those readers who have no previous exposure to operating systems in general. There is plenty of pseudocode and instructive diagrams. However, when it comes to actually writing an embedded system with VxWorks, no book that I know of actually gives out that kind of knowledge. There is no substitute to attaching yourself to a person experienced in this sort of work and learning by example. But first, read this book so that you understand what it is that they are teaching you. For real newbies, read "Designing Embedded Hardware" to get an idea of what devices make up an embedded system, and then "Programming Embedded Systems with C and C++" to get an idea of how these devices are controlled. At that point, you will be ready for this book.