Real Time Systems Laboratory Development: Experiments Focusing On A Dual Core Processor
- Conference
- Location
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Chicago, Illinois
- Publication Date
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June 18, 2006
- Start Date
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June 18, 2006
- End Date
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June 21, 2006
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Electrical and Computer
- Page Count
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9
- Page Numbers
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11.1064.1 - 11.1064.9
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--451
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/451
- Download Count
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410
Paper Authors
Mukul Shirvaikar University of Texas-Tyler
MUKUL SHIRVAIKAR received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 1993. He is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Tyler. He has also held positions at Texas Instruments and the University of West Florida. His research interests include real-time imaging, embedded systems and pattern recognition.
Mark Humphries University of Texas-Tyler
MARK HUMPHRIES received his Master’s in Electrical Engineering in 2005 from the University of Texas at Tyler, and is a practicing engineer at General Dynamics Inc. in Longview, Texas. He developed real-time systems labs for the OMAP platform. His interests include real-time imaging, open source software and spatial geometry optimization algorithms for multi-faceted cubes.
Leonardo Estevez Texas Instruments Inc.
LEONARDO ESTEVEZ received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Texas A & M University in 1997. He is currently the OMAP Software Architecture and Requirements Manager at Texas Instruments. He has many national engineering awards including SHPE in 2001 and the HENAAC “Most Promising Engineer” award in 2002. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Real Time Imaging.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Real Time Systems Laboratory Development: Experiments Focusing on a Dual Core Processor
Abstract
This paper presents the laboratory curriculum developed for a senior-level elective course in Real Time Systems. The labs developed for this semester long course are aimed at providing a challenging experience to electrical and computer engineering students and exposing them to state-of-the-art tools from industry. The projects were developed on the OMAP 5912 starter kit module supplied by Texas Instruments (TI). The open multimedia architecture platform (OMAP) technology from TI consists mainly of dual-core processor chips. The OMAP 5912 chip has an ARM processor and a C55 digital signal processor (DSP) in the same package. The Linux kernel runs on the ARM processor and the DSP-BIOS kernel runs on the TI C55 DSP in tandem. The real time software development tools for this system are the Code Composer Studio integrated development environment (IDE) and the Monta Vista Linux environment. The platform is thus ideally suited to expose students to real time systems. The projects developed cover the following topics sequentially: introduction to the environment, real time operating systems, software development and application debugging. Some of the applications covered are: implementing a finite impulse response (FIR) filter and testing with audio, modifying the filter for different band pass characteristics, testing an audio codec and implementing an embedded web server. TI expects to disseminate the instructional resources developed and tested in this course to other universities and industry partners.
Introduction
Dual-core processors have recently entered mainstream computing in PC systems, and it is critical for students of computer engineering to be exposed to them early in their career. This paper extends past work 1, which presented the development of some introductory labs using TI's P P
OMAP 5912 Starter Kit (OSK). The Real Time Systems senior elective course at the University of Texas at Tyler combines lectures along with an integrated lab. The students are required to have at least one course in structured programming, and a course or prior experience with the operation of microprocessors, but Linux experience is not required. The lecture portion of the course introduces students to real-time system concepts including, hard and soft deadlines, scheduling algorithms, inter-task communication and synchronization. The lab portion of the course reinforces these theoretical concepts and provides hands-on familiarity with software, hardware, and development tools essential for real time systems development professionals. For example, hard deadlines have to be met in order to complete dual-core data processing.
The initial version of the lab procedures utilized a digital signal processor (DSP) based system. Texas Instruments' (TI) introduction of a cost effective dual core processor (OMAP 5912) development system has enabled a new lab curricula. The OMAP 5912 gives us the flexibility of development for a general-purpose processor based (GPP) system combined with the processing efficiency of a DSP based system. The sheer number of new concepts introduced to students in this course reflects the reality they have to face in the new job market. In order to fit in as professionals the students have to be conversant with real-time, computer architecture, DSP,
Shirvaikar, M., & Humphries, M., & Estevez, L. (2006, June), Real Time Systems Laboratory Development: Experiments Focusing On A Dual Core Processor Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--451
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