Tutorial: creating an introductory embedded systems course for the computer science curriculum

Abstract

It is clear that mobile embedded systems such as cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) comprise a growing market segement. In fact, there is a sea change that has occurred in the area of embedded systems. Somewhat swiftly over the last five years or so, full fledged operating systems are readily available in embedded systems, where not long ago only the higher end embedded systems had such capabilities. Further, these are general purpose operating systems and, where appropriate, deployed with windowing systems as a graphical user interface.This presents an opportunity for computer science students. Formerly, it was something of a leap for them to embark on a career in embedded systems, unless they had received significant hardware training. However, these newer embedded systems provide an environment where such students can contribute significantly using development tools with witch they are familiar. Such a developer can make great progress with only occasional guidance from a hardware guru. Nevertheless, the typical computer science student interested in career in embedded systems make a transition. The development environment for embedded systems is not familiar, although the software tools are.This tutorial will introduce participants to a course targeting computer scientists who wish to make the transition to embedded systems programming. The underlying course is freely available on the Internet, should tutorial participants wish to embark on a detailed course of study or adopt it for their own classroom use. This tutorial will introduce and give a short discussion of these topics:an overview of the embedded system development environmentworking with 'local' targets i.e. floppy diskettes or CDROMs to establish a somewhat prototypical environmentmoving on to working with a more typical 'alien' architecture as the embedded targetconfiguring the workstation for embedded development (software tools etc.)establishing connectivity between work station and targettailoring an operating system destined for the targetadding existing applications/functionality to the targetdeveloping new applications for the targetThe environment for both workstation and target is Linux based to provide maximum flexibility. Participants will be provided with CDs containing the full course.