News

2012-01-02		Preliminary results from the grading of the final exam 2011-12-14 available via the Student Portal (link here). The graded scripts can be inspected on Tuesday, January 3 at 13:00-15:00 in room 4128.
2011-12-27		Due to the teacher's illness the grading of the written exam from 2011-12-14 will be delayed until Jan 2, 2012.
2011-12-09		It is now possible to book a time for presentation of your solutions to HWA #2 via the homework assignments page.
2011-12-06		Handouts for Lecture #14 available here.
2011-12-04		Handouts for Lecture #13 available here. Guest lecturer is Dr. Jan Gustafsson from Mälardalen University.
2011-11-29		Handouts for Lecture #12 available here.
2011-11-25		Handouts for Lecture #11 available here. Guest lecturer is Dr. Roger Johansson from Chalmers.
2011-11-22		It is now possible to book a time for presentation of your solutions to HWA #1 via the homework assignments page.
2011-11-21		Please note that will be no lecture on Thursday, Nov 24. Instead, two time slots for presentation of HWA #1 will be available in its place. Next lecture (#11) takes place on Monday, Nov 28.
2011-11-21		Homework assignment #2 available here. You are urged to read the rules for collaboration and submission.
2011-11-17		Handouts for Lecture #10 available here.
2011-11-15		Handouts for Lecture #9 available here.
2011-11-11		There is now a student representative for the course evaluation (for more information, see here.)
2011-11-11		Please note that the relevant chapters from the Krishna and Shin course book can be downloaded here.
2011-11-10		Please note that will be no lecture on Monday, Nov 14. Next lecture (#9) takes place on Thursday, Nov 17.
2011-11-08		Handouts for Lecture #8 available here.
2011-11-08		Regarding problem 6 in HWA #1, use the correct algorithm as given in the original paper by Xu and Parnas (download here).
2011-11-08		Regarding problem 3 in HWA #1, consult the original paper on P-fair scheduling by Baruah et al. (download here). In particular, the definitions in Section 3 and 4 together with the example in Section 5 will be helpful. The overview presentation by Andersson is also recommended reading (download here).
2011-11-06		Handouts for Lecture #7 available here.
2011-11-03		Homework assignment #1 available here. You are urged to read the rules for collaboration and submission.
2011-11-03		It is now possible to register to a homework assignment group via the homework assignments page.
2011-11-01		Handouts for Lecture #6 available here.
2011-10-29		Handouts for Lectures #4 and #5 available here.
2011-10-24		Handouts for Lecture #3 available here.
2011-10-23		Handouts for Lectures #1 and #2 available here.
2011-10-18		Created a first draft of the official home page of the course for 2011/12. Note: many links are not yet working.

Staff (contact information)

• Jan Jonsson, Lecturer and Examiner
• Behrooz Sangchoolie, Course assistant

Course elements

• Fourteen lectures.
• Two homework assignments, done in groups of at most two people.
• A written exam.

Aim and context

Real-time systems play a vital role in many application domains including drive-by-wire automotive systems, intelligent traffic control systems, banking systems, and autonomous robots. For many real-time applications, the system must be designed with multiple processors in order to meet imposed application constraints. Such situations can occur when tasks need to be physically distributed (as in a fault-tolerant vehicle braking system) or when the inherent parallelism of the application need to be fully exploited (as in a high-performance multimedia application).

After the course the students shall be able to:

• Formulate requirements for computer systems used in time- and safety critical applications.
• Master the terminology of scheduling and complexity theory.
• Describe the principles and mechanisms used for scheduling of task execution and data communication in real-time systems.
• Derive performance for, and be familiar with the theoretical performance limitations of, a given real-time system.

This course is intended to give a deeper understanding of the problems involved in designing real-time systems based on multiprocessor architectures, and covers the following topics:

• Background: motivation for, and definition of, real-time computing systems.
• Characteristics of real-time systems: application constraints, design methods, task models, run-time mechanisms, architectures.
• Evaluation of real-time systems: performance measures, evaluation methodologies.
• Single and multiprocessor scheduling: problem definition, terminology, and algorithms.
• Complexity theory and NP-completeness in the context of real-time scheduling.
• Real-time communications: protocols and end-to-end delay guarantees.
• Fault-tolerance techniques for real-time systems: models, algorithms and architectures.
• Distributed clock synchronization.
• Estimation of task execution times.

Context

The course requires a BSc in Computer Science and Engineering or equivalent. Preparatory courses in real-time systems, algorithms, operating systems and computer architecture are desired but not required.

Important Dates

	Mon	Oct 24	:	First lecture, 13.15 - 15.00 in EL43
	Thu	Nov 3	:	Homework assignment #1 handed out
	Mon	Nov 21	:	Deadline, Homework assignment #1
	Mon	Nov 21	:	Homework assignment #2 handed out
	Fri	Dec 09	:	Deadline, Homework assignment #2
	Wed	Dec 14	:	Written exam, afternoon, Johanneberg

Lectures

The course is organized as a series of lectures where fundamental theories and concepts are presented. Lectures are given at two occasions per week (except study week 1 and 2 where there are extra lectures):

	Mon		13.15 - 15.00		EL43
	Thu		10.00 - 11.45		EL41
	Tue		10.00 - 11.45		EL41		(week 1-2 only)

As a complement to the lectures, there will be two homework assignments on the specific topics covered during the scheduled lectures. As an aid for the students for their homework, consultation sessions will be offered. The consultation sessions offer assistance regarding questions and problems related to the homework assignments (or other related issues). The intention is for the student to attempt to solve the problems and then go to the consultation session in case help is needed. Consultation sessions are offered on one occasion per week (except study week 1 & 2):

	Fri		15.15 - 17.00		EL41		(week 3, 5, 6 and 7)
	Fri		15.15 - 17.00		EL43		(week 4 only)

Preliminary schedule: TimeEdit

Detailed information on the lectures will appear here.

Course literature

Selected research publications from journals and conference proceedings (downloadable here.)

Course Evaluation

For the purpose of course evaluation, we ask volunteers to act as student representatives. Their role includes giving the teachers some feedback on the course. Please send them an email if you have comments or suggestions for improvements regarding the course.

The student representatives are:

	Sam Safaei

Minutes from mid-quarter course evaluation meeting can be found here.

Chalmers central instructions on course evaluation