Real-Time Programming: A Guide to 32-bit Embedded Development [Paperback]

Rick Grehan (Author), Robert Moote (Author), Ingo Cyliax (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 19, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0201485400 | ISBN-13: 978-0201485400

Real-time embedded systems have rigid requirements and must conform to strict size, cost, weight, power, operation, and response-time specifications. They must be crash-proof and must operate under a wide range of conditions. Add to these requirements the ever-increasing competitive pressures to bring products to market faster and at a lower cost, and it is easy to see why building such systems is difficult. Real-time programmers must write software that meets unforgiving objectives under numerous constraints. Teaching you how is the goal of this book.Real-Time Programming is a comprehensive guide that *Covers 32-bit real-time embedded programming topics, including debugging, timers, interrupts, multitasking, serial I/O, TCP/IP networking, and ROMing an application *Explores implementing new technologies, such as flash storage and Web-enabled applications *Emphasizes a practical, hands-on approach, drawing on code examples from real-world projects constructed during the course of the book *Provides complete coverage of the embedded development cycle, from design through implementation *Lets developers start building real-time embedded systems immediately using commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and software. No matter what hardware and software platforms you will ultimately use, this book lays the groundwork and gets you up-to-speed on the unique requirements of real-time embedded programming. 0201485400B04062001

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Real-time embedded systems (microprocessors that work in real-time) are all around us--in our cars, microwaves, and video games. Real-Time Programming: A Guide to 32-Bit Embedded Development uses the 32-bit Intel x86 platform to show that it's possible to learn the essence of writing embedded systems without a degree in engineering.

The authors first explain what embedded systems are and the strict constraints that developers face when creating embedded software. (Obviously, the failure of an embedded system for a medical or security device will have disastrous consequences.) Next, they introduce a little analysis and design, since questions on hardware and performance requirements are particularly important for embedded systems. The authors use the Phar Lap Realtime ETS ToolSuite Lite as their platform of choice (included on the CD-ROM), along with Microsoft Visual C++. A simple Point of Sale (POS) simulation is the first example, giving the authors a chance to explore keyboard, screen, and file input/output (I/O). Another example, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), is used to illustrate the thornier topics in real-time programming, such as interrupt handling, timers, threads, and multithreading.

Next, the book shows you how to get embedded systems to communicate, including material on RS-232 serial communications (and UARTs). As the UPS sample gets more enhanced, it becomes network enabled with support for sending and receiving data using IP and HTTP.

The book rounds off with an introduction to Java for embedded systems and other specialized topics (such as floating-point processing) and advice for deploying software in ROM. By avoiding a lot of theory and stressing practical examples, Real-Time Programming puts embedded development into the hands of everyday C++ programmers. --Richard Dragan

Review

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Real-time programming is a branch of computer control engineering. Real-time programming is a lot of math, it's a very detailed understanding of hardware, and it's you-bet-the-farm game theory. Publishers and authors claiming single-volume "complete references" to real-time programming are debasing the professional coinage. Grehan et al's offering is, however, a tolerably rousing intro to doing neat stuff with Phar Lap's 32-bit ETS Kernel included on the accompanying CD-ROM. Some of the examples are very well chosen. I was enjoying reading Chapter 6 ("Keyboard and Screen I/O") when carelessness and a lack of service to the reader obtruded. Figure 6-5 purports to show a Hitachi LM032 LCD attached to a "CPU or Parallel I/O Chip." Why bother to tell us that it's an LM032 if you're just going to draw two bare rectangles and 12 black lines connecting them without labeling the signals? Sparseness of incidental detail is not a virtue in an embedded control tome. --Jack Woehr, Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books -- Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

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Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (December 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201485400
• ISBN-13: 978-0201485400
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,452,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More like a huge advert for proprietary software, May 22, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Real-Time Programming: A Guide to 32-bit Embedded Development (Paperback)

I applaud the goal as stated in the book's title, and we very much need such a book. For me, this isn't it. I felt that their synopsis claims were not entirely honest: not only is this book based entirely on a proprietary operating system, but the learning version included with the book has been hamstrung to protect the full version. This makes sense, but their chosen method was to prevent you from being able to save your programming to disk or ROM; in other words, so that it can't be embedded. Seems difficult at best to learn embedded programming with software that can't be embedded. And the retail version of the tools on which this book is based cost a fortune. I suppose you could filter for more generally applicable information, but for me it just wasn't worth it. If you were going to pony up the dough for their OS, it would definitely be useful, but in that case they should give it to you as a manual!

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not much about real-time programming, January 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Real-Time Programming: A Guide to 32-bit Embedded Development (Paperback)

For a book that claims to be about real-time programming, this book fails miserably. An example, the discussion of scheduling describes a round-robin scheduler and says "[f]or other scheduling algorithms, refer to any good book on operating systems."

I really expected more from Addison-Wesley.

Oh, ok... and here I thought scheduling had something to do with real-time systems, guess I was wrong.

A general overview of development and design, a couple details-free chapters on hardware, a few brief words about operating systems (in about the same depth as schedulers), then networking, HTTP and Java. The common thread that runs throgh all of these is their proprietary system which they refrain from disclosing any of the details of, but do provide you with some nice UPS simulators and software that runs only under windows.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, Wrong Title, October 16, 2000

By 

R. Hornbaker (Chandler, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Real-Time Programming: A Guide to 32-bit Embedded Development (Paperback)

What this book is: An introduction to developing for single-board computer (SBC) platforms (Intel x86), including interesting topics like connecting to pushbuttons and LCD displays. I personally found the book very interesting, as it's focused on x86-based embedded systems, rather than traditional embedded processors.

What this book is not: It's not about real-time programming - it's about SBC programming and the nuances of embedded systems. Coverage of true real-time techniques is very cursory, as mentioned here in another review about scheduling (likewise for subjects like de-bouncing of inputs and watchdog circuitry).

On the positive side, there is a progressive collection of examples that implement each of the principles presented. The code is included on the CD, along with a demo development library to build the examples. By including the demo library, the reader can get kick-started, even if they ultimately switch to another kernel.

On the negative side, the entire book is a heavily product-specific discussion around the PharLap RTOS kernel included on the CD (which is a crippled license for prototyping only). All the examples are dependent upon the reader using the PharLap kernel and a Windows-based machine with Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler.

In short: All in all, I found this book was a worthy addition to my library, and a great introduction to some of the issues and techniques that are unique to programming embedded PCs.

I'm glad I bought it, but I would have been happier if it had included coverage of other kernels (like embedded Linux), and an intro to some of the alternatives to x86-based CPUs. I was also disappointed that PharLap disabled Borland C++ support in the demo license - the logic for this escapes me.