Cyber-physical systems (CPS) integrate sensing, computing, communication and actuation capabilities to monitor and control operations in the physical environment. A key requirement of such systems is the need to provide predictable real-time performance: the timing correctness of the system should be analyzable at design time with a quantitative metric and guaranteed at runtime with high assurance. This requirement of predictability is particularly important for safety-critical domains such as automobiles, aerospace, defense, manufacturing and medical devices. The work in this dissertation focuses on the challenges arising from the use of modern multi-core platforms in CPS. Even as of today, multi-core platforms are rarely used in safety-critical applications primarily due to the temporal interference caused by contention on various resources shared among processor cores, such as caches, memory buses, and I/O devices. Such interference is hard to predict and can significantly increase task execution time, e.g., up to 12 commodity quad-core platforms. To address the problem of ensuring timing predictability on multi-core platforms, we develop novel analytical and systems techniques in this dissertation. Our proposed techniques theoretically bound temporal interference that tasks may suffer from when accessing shared resources. Our techniques also involve software primitives and algorithms for real-time operating systems and hypervisors, which significantly reduce the degree of the temporal interference. Specifically, we tackle the issues of cache and memory contention, locking and synchronization, interrupt handling, and access control for computational accelerators such as general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs), all of which are crucial to achieving predictable real-time performance on a modern multi-core platform. Our solutions are readily applicable to commodity multi-core platforms, and can be used not only for developing new systems but also migrating existing applications from single-core to multi-core platforms.

This Master thesis deals with mobile technologies used for teaching and for management of schools. The theoretical part attempts to define the phenomenon of m- technologies and specifies both the determinate forms and the effects of the innovation when applied to education. The research portion carried out at primary schools by way of a qualitative survey and an interview examines the degree of readiness and the extent of the use of m-technologies with regard to the constructed school infrastructure and to the professional skill of teachers associated with it. Management of a school will get valuable information about the risks related to the introduction of the new technology and, in form of a guide, it will learn how to prepare a project and what to follow while creating the appropriate infrastructure at a school.

This Master thesis deals with mobile technologies used for teaching and for management of schools. The theoretical part attempts to define the phenomenon of m-technologies and specifies both its determinate forms and its effects when applied to education. The research portion carried out at primary schools by way of a qualitative survey examines the state of m-technologies used at elementary schools and the degree of engagement of the school headmasters and ICT specialists (respondents). It presents an example of a positive experience in the use of m-technologies at schools in the video study. The Master thesis includes a guide of the m-technologies used at schools.

Ten years after the Internet revolution are we standing on the brink of another revolution: networked embedded systems that connect the physical world with the computers, enabling new applications ranging from environmental monitoring and wildlife tracking to improvements in health care and medicine. 98% of all microprocessors sold today are used in embedded systems. Those systems have much smaller amounts of memory than PC computers. An embedded system may have as little has a few hundred bytes of memory, which makes programming them a challenge. This thesis focus on three topics regarding programming memory-constrained networked embedded systems: the TCP/IP for memory-constrained networked embedded systems, simplifying event-driven programming of memory-constrained systems, and dynamic loading of program modules in my Contiki operating system for memory-constrained systems. I show that the TCP/IP protocol stack can, contrary to previous belief, be used in memory-constrained embedded systems by implementing two small TCP/IP protocol stacks, lwIP and uIP. I present a novel programming mechanism called protothreads that I show significantly reduce the complexity of event-driven programming for memory-constrained systems. Protothreads provide a conditional blocked wait mechanism on top of event-driven systems with a much smaller memory overhead than full multithreading; each protothread requires only two bytes of memory. I show that dynamic linking of native code in standard ELF object code format is doable and feasible for wireless sensor networks by implementing a dynamic linker in the Contiki operating system. The results show that the energy overhead of dynamic linking of ELF files mainly is due to the ELF file format and not due to the dynamic linking mechanism as such. The impact of the research in this thesis has been and continues to be large. The software I have developed as part of this thesis is currently used by hundreds of companies in embedded devices in such diverse systems as car engines and satellites. The papers in this thesis are included as required reading in advanced courses on networked embedded systems and wireless sensor networks. / Contiki / uIP / Protothreads

Technological development has significantly reduced the distance between the performance of systems designed using reconfigurable computing and dedicated hardware. The main sources of performance are the high density level of the FPGAs and the resources? improvement offered by manufacturers, who make more its use more attractive in a variety of applications, emphatically in systems that demand a high degree of flexibility. In this context, the objective of this work consists on the exploration of the resources offered by FPGAs for the development of a multiprocessed platform with the purpose of parallel execution of tasks. In this way, the eCos operating system was modified, with the addition of new characteristics to support of the Symmetric Multiprocessing model, using three soft-Core Altera Nios II processors. On this operating system, all parallelism is directly related to execution of the threads. This platform was analyzed and validated through the execution of parallel algorithms, emphasizing aspects of performance and flexibility compared to other architectures. This work contributes for reaching better results in the execution of tasks in robotics area, which belongs to a domain that demand great competition of tasks, mainly in modules that involve interaction with the external environment / Technological development has significantly reduced the distance between the performance of systems designed using reconfigurable computing and dedicated hardware. The main sources of performance are the high density level of the FPGAs and the resources? improvement offered by manufacturers, who make more its use more attractive in a variety of applications, emphatically in systems that demand a high degree of flexibility. In this context, the objective of this work consists on the exploration of the resources offered by FPGAs for the development of a multiprocessed platform with the purpose of parallel execution of tasks. In this way, the eCos operating system was modified, with the addition of new characteristics to support of the Symmetric Multiprocessing model, using three soft-Core Altera Nios II processors. On this operating system, all parallelism is directly related to execution of the threads. This platform was analyzed and validated through the execution of parallel algorithms, emphasizing aspects of performance and flexibility compared to other architectures. This work contributes for reaching better results in the execution of tasks in robotics area, which belongs to a domain that demand great competition of tasks, mainly in modules that involve interaction with the external environment

Nas últimas décadas, muitos pesquisadores dedicaram-se a avançar o modelo atual de abstração de processos, seja por meio da adição de camadas extras de segurança, seja em busca de melhorias de desempenho, ou ainda com o objetivo de fornecer suporte para novos recursos de hardware. Tais melhorias são relevantes porque abstrações de processos em SOs de propósito geral representam o ponto de encontro de diversos recursos de interesse dos usuários. Processos representam a convergência entre a aplicação dos usuários, os modelos de programação oferecidos pelo SO e a utilização dos recursos de hardware. Os esforços para expandir as capacidades dos SOs no nível da abstração de processos abrem uma nova área de pesquisa ainda pouco explorada. Nesta dissertação, após um levantamento preliminar dos trabalhos relacionados ao tema, nos concentramos em 9 pesquisas que foram selecionadas levando-se em consideração aspectos como as propostas de implementação adotadas por elas e o seu impacto na literatura da área. Desses trabalhos, derivamos um conjunto de características que consideramos importantes para guiar o desenvolvimento da próxima geração de abstrações de processos. Partindo de tais características, propomos um modelo teórico chamado de bead cujo o objetivo é ilustrar os desafios e vantagem em se expandir as abstrações de processos. Além disso, sugerimos uma coleção de microbenchmarks que podem ser utilizados para revelar parte dos impactos de novas abstrações de processos. Por fim, realizamos uma discussão sobre aplicações de uso cotidiano que podem ser utilizadas para a validação dessas propostas e que também possam delas se beneficiar. / In recent decades, many researchers committed to pushing forward the current model of process abstraction, either by adding extra layers of security or seeking performance improvements or even providing support for new hardware. Such enhancements are relevant because process abstractions in general-purpose OSes represent the meeting point of several aspects of users concern. Processes join together user applications, programming models provided by the OS and hardware resources access. Efforts to expand OS capabilities at the process abstraction level represent a new and underexplored research field. In this thesis, after a preliminary survey of the area, we selected nine works to focus on by considering aspects such as their implementation approach and their impact on the literature. From these works, we extracted a set of characteristics that we consider essential to guide the development of the next generation of process abstractions. Based on such characteristics, we propose a theoretical model called bead, which illustrates the challenges and advantages of expanding process abstractions. Furthermore, we suggest a collection of microbenchmarks that can be used to reveal some of the impacts of new process abstractions. Finally, we discuss real-world applications that can be used to validate these proposals, and that could also benefit from them.

Sistemas embarcados ganham cada vez mais espaço devido ao aumento da demanda por novas funções em equipamentos, às normas regulatórias e às novas necessidades dos consumidores e do mercado. Esse aumento nos requisitos aumenta o tamanho e a complexidade dos softwares embarcados cuja importância cresce significativamente. Sistemas operacionais de tempo real constituem uma ferramenta poderosa para gerenciar a complexidade, facilitar o reuso e aumentar a portabilidade do software e também reduzir o time-to-market. Este trabalho visa avaliar a aplicabilidade de sistemas operacionais de tempo real em sistemas embarcados de baixo custo que utilizam microprocessadores pequenos (8 e 16 bits), avaliando suas características e propondo as melhores alternativas para desenvolvimento de software embarcado. Para o atendimento desta proposta, foi realizado o levantamento de características sobre o desenvolvimento brasileiro de sistemas embarcados, uma análise das características de sistemas de pequeno porte, uma discussão da viabilidade do uso de RTOS e um estudo de caso comparando arquiteturas de software embarcado. Os resultados principais mostram que arquiteturas simplificadas como a Superloop apresentam vantagem sobre os sistemas operacionais devido ao baixo consumo de memória e processamento. Os sistemas operacionais, apesar de propiciarem desenvolvimentos de códigos modulares bem como facilitar o gerenciamento de tempo, são de difícil implementação em microcontroladores pequenos, devido ao seu elevado consumo de memória e processamento. O uso de sistemas operacionais é viável para sistemas de pequeno porte com no mínimo 4 Kbytes de memória RAM e processos com limite de tempo máximo para execução (deadlines) superiores a 1 ms, condições essas que evitam a sobrecarga do microcontrolador. Neste trabalho também é mostrado um retrato do desenvolvimento de embarcados no Brasil. / Embedded systems, more and more are gaining importance, due to the increase of features requested on equipments, the regulatory standards and the costumers and market requirements. This increment on requirements increases the software size and complexity, which importance significantly grows. Real-time operating systems represents a powerful tool to manage the complexity, help the software reuse and improve portability of the software and also reduce the time-to-market. This work aims to analyze the real-time operating systems, verifying their application on low cost embedded systems using small microcontrollers (8 and 16-bit), evaluating their characteristics and propose the best architectures for software development. To attend this proposal, it was performed a survey of Brazilian embedded system development, evaluates the low cost embedded system characteristics, discusses the viability of RTOS usage and performs a comparative study of embedded software architectures. Results show that simplified architectures like the Superloop presents vantages over the operating systems due to their low memory and processing consumption. The operating system, besides helping on time management and code modularity, is difficult to implement in small microcontrollers, due to the high memory and processing consumption. The operating systems are more applicable to small embedded systems with at minimum 4 Kbytes of RAM memory and process with maximum execution time (deadlines) over 1 ms, conditions that do not causes microcontroller overload. In this work is also presented an overview of Brazilian embedded system development.

Zhang, Yupeng. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-48). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Sistemas embarcados ganham cada vez mais espaço devido ao aumento da demanda por novas funções em equipamentos, às normas regulatórias e às novas necessidades dos consumidores e do mercado. Esse aumento nos requisitos aumenta o tamanho e a complexidade dos softwares embarcados cuja importância cresce significativamente. Sistemas operacionais de tempo real constituem uma ferramenta poderosa para gerenciar a complexidade, facilitar o reuso e aumentar a portabilidade do software e também reduzir o time-to-market. Este trabalho visa avaliar a aplicabilidade de sistemas operacionais de tempo real em sistemas embarcados de baixo custo que utilizam microprocessadores pequenos (8 e 16 bits), avaliando suas características e propondo as melhores alternativas para desenvolvimento de software embarcado. Para o atendimento desta proposta, foi realizado o levantamento de características sobre o desenvolvimento brasileiro de sistemas embarcados, uma análise das características de sistemas de pequeno porte, uma discussão da viabilidade do uso de RTOS e um estudo de caso comparando arquiteturas de software embarcado. Os resultados principais mostram que arquiteturas simplificadas como a Superloop apresentam vantagem sobre os sistemas operacionais devido ao baixo consumo de memória e processamento. Os sistemas operacionais, apesar de propiciarem desenvolvimentos de códigos modulares bem como facilitar o gerenciamento de tempo, são de difícil implementação em microcontroladores pequenos, devido ao seu elevado consumo de memória e processamento. O uso de sistemas operacionais é viável para sistemas de pequeno porte com no mínimo 4 Kbytes de memória RAM e processos com limite de tempo máximo para execução (deadlines) superiores a 1 ms, condições essas que evitam a sobrecarga do microcontrolador. Neste trabalho também é mostrado um retrato do desenvolvimento de embarcados no Brasil. / Embedded systems, more and more are gaining importance, due to the increase of features requested on equipments, the regulatory standards and the costumers and market requirements. This increment on requirements increases the software size and complexity, which importance significantly grows. Real-time operating systems represents a powerful tool to manage the complexity, help the software reuse and improve portability of the software and also reduce the time-to-market. This work aims to analyze the real-time operating systems, verifying their application on low cost embedded systems using small microcontrollers (8 and 16-bit), evaluating their characteristics and propose the best architectures for software development. To attend this proposal, it was performed a survey of Brazilian embedded system development, evaluates the low cost embedded system characteristics, discusses the viability of RTOS usage and performs a comparative study of embedded software architectures. Results show that simplified architectures like the Superloop presents vantages over the operating systems due to their low memory and processing consumption. The operating system, besides helping on time management and code modularity, is difficult to implement in small microcontrollers, due to the high memory and processing consumption. The operating systems are more applicable to small embedded systems with at minimum 4 Kbytes of RAM memory and process with maximum execution time (deadlines) over 1 ms, conditions that do not causes microcontroller overload. In this work is also presented an overview of Brazilian embedded system development.