Introduction

Abstract

People in modern society are surrounded by computers. This is very impressive, considering that the electronic computer was a rare and simple calculator the size of a house little over half a century ago. Since then, we have seen an amazing development that turned these machines into computational marvels that contribute to most aspects of our daily lives. Computers became faster and cheaper, and found their way into our homes. They also became smaller and more energy efficient, resulting in portable laptop computers that accompany us when traveling. However, the majority of computers in our daily lives are not the general personal computers we use at work, school, or in the office. Instead, these are the embedded systems that are built for a particular purpose, such as our mobile phones, MP3-players, televisions, DVD-players, and navigation systems. Examples of embedded systems outside the consumer electronics domain involve the many computers inside washing machines, cars, and airplanes. The impressive development of embedded systems is not without drawbacks. As systems become increasingly powerful and integrate more and more functionality, they also become more difficult to produce. More advanced devices consist of more hardware and software components that must be designed, integrated and verified. To stay ahead of the competition, companies have to design these complex systems in a very short time[54]. A particular challenge with embedded systems is that their applications often have timing requirements and must produce the right result at the right time to prevent quality degradation or even system malfunction. These timing requirements provide the high-level problem addressed in this book.