The first book to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject rather than a collection of papers. The author is a recognized authority in the field as well as an outstanding teacher lauded for his ability to convey these concepts clearly to many different audiences. A handy reference for practitioners in the field.

This classroom-tested textbook describes the design and implementation of software for distributed real-time systems, using a bottom-up approach. The text addresses common challenges faced in software projects involving real-time systems, and presents a novel method for simply and effectively performing all of the software engineering steps. Each chapter opens with a discussion of the core concepts, together with a review of the relevant methods and available software. This is then followed with a description of the implementation of the concepts in a sample kernel, complete with executable code. Topics and features: introduces the fundamentals of real-time systems, including real-time architecture and distributed real-time systems; presents a focus on the real-time operating system, covering the concepts of task, memory, and input/output management; provides a detailed step-by-step construction of a real-time operating system kernel, which is then used to test various higher level implementations; describes periodic and aperiodic scheduling, resource management, and distributed scheduling; reviews the process of application design from high-level design methods to low-level details of design and implementation; surveys real-time programming languages and fault tolerance techniques; includes end-of-chapter review questions, extensive C code, numerous examples, and a case study implementing the methods in real-world applications; supplies additional material at an associated website. Requiring only a basic background in computer architecture and operating systems, this practically-oriented work is an invaluable study aid for senior undergraduate and graduate-level students of electrical and computer engineering, and computer science. The text will also serve as a useful general reference for researchers interested in real-time systems.

This volume contains the 37 papers presented at the 9th International Con- rence on Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems and Applications (RT- CSA 2003). RTCSA is an international conference organized for scientists and researchers from both academia and industry to hold intensive discussions on advancing technologies topics on real-time systems, embedded systems, ubiq- tous/pervasive computing, and related topics. RTCSA 2003 was held at the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. Paper submissions were well distributed over the various aspects of real-time computing and embedded system technologies. There were more than 100 participants from all over the world. The papers, including 28 regular papers and 9 short papers are grouped into thecategoriesofscheduling,networkingandcommunication,embeddedsystems, pervasive/ubiquitous computing, systems and architectures, resource mana- ment, ?le systems and databases, performance analysis, and tools and de- lopment. The grouping is basically in accordance with the conference program. Earlier versions of these papers were published in the conference proceedings. However, some papers in this volume have been modi?ed or improved by the authors, in various aspects, based on comments and feedback received at the conference. It is our sincere hope that researchers and developers will bene?t from these papers. We would like to thank all the authors of the papers for their contribution. We thank the members of the program committee and the reviewers for their excellent work in evaluating the submissions. We are also very grateful to all the members of the organizing committees for their help, guidance and support.

The complexity of most real-time and embedded systems often exceeds that of other types of systems since, in addition to the usual spectrum of problems inherent in software, they need to deal with the complexities of the physical world. That world—as the proverbial Mr. Murphy tells us—is an unpredictable and often unfriendly place. Consequently, there is a very strong motivation to investigate and apply advanced design methods and technologies that could simplify and improve the reliability of real-time software design and implementation. As a result, from the first versions of UML issued in the mid 1990’s, designers of embedded and real-time systems have taken to UML with vigour and enthusiasm. However, the dream of a complete, model-driven design flow from specification through automated, optimised code generation, has been difficult to realise without some key improvements in UML semantics and syntax, specifically targeted to the real-time systems problem. With the enhancements in UML that have been proposed and are near standardisation with UML 2. 0, many of these improvements have been made. In the Spring of 2003, adoption of a formalised UML 2. 0 specification by the members of the Object Management Group (OMG) seems very close. It is therefore very appropriate to review the status of UML as a set of notations for embedded real-time systems - both the state of the art and best practices achieved up to this time with UML of previous generations - and where the changes embodied in the 2.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Embedded Software, EMSOFT 2003, held in Philadelphia, PA, USA in October 2003. The 20 revised full papers presented together with three invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. All current topics in embedded software are addressed: formal methods and model-based development, middleware and fault tolerance, modelling and analysis, programming languages and compilers, real-time scheduling, resource-aware systems, and systems on a chip.

This handbook provides full coverage of the most recent and advanced topics in scheduling, assembling researchers from all relevant disciplines to facilitate new insights. Presented in six parts, these experts provides introductory material, complete with tutorials and algorithms, then examine classical scheduling problems. Part 3 explores scheduling models that originate in areas such as computer science, operations research. The following section examines scheduling problems that arise in real-time systems. Part 5 discusses stochastic scheduling and queueing networks, and the final section discusses a range of applications in a variety of areas, from airlines to hospitals.