Embedded Systems

1 - Introduction

© Lothar Thiele
Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory
Lecture Organization

122

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Organization
WWW: https://www.tec.ee.ethz.ch/education/lectures/embedded-systems.html
Lecture: Lothar Thiele, [email protected]; Michele Magno <[email protected]>
Coordination: Seonyeong Heo (ETZ D97.7) <[email protected]>
References:
 P. Marwedel: Embedded System Design, Springer, ISBN 978-3-319-85812-8/978-3-030-
60909-2, 2018/2021.
 G.C. Buttazzo: Hard Real-Time Computing Systems. Springer Verlag, ISBN 978-1-4614-
0676-1, 2011.
 Edward A. Lee and Sanjit A. Seshia: Introduction to Embedded Systems, A Cyber-
Physical Systems Approach, Second Edition, MIT Press, ISBN 978-0-262-53381-2, 2017.

Sources: The slides contain ideas and material of J. Rabaey, K. Keuzer, M. Wolf, P.
Marwedel, P. Koopman, E. Lee, P. Dutta, S. Seshia, and from the above cited books.

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Organization Summary
 Lectures are held on Mondays from 14:15 to 16:00 in ETF C1 until further notice.
Life streaming and slides are available via the web page of the lecture. In
addition, you find audio and video recordings of most of the slides as well as
recordings of this years and last years life streams on the web page of the
lecture.
 Exercises take place on Wednesdays and Fridays from 16:15 to 17:00 via Zoom.
On Wednesdays the lecture material is summarized, hints on how to approach
the solution are given and a sample question is solved. On Fridays, the correct
solutions are discussed.
 Laboratories take place on Wednesdays and Fridays from 16:15 to 18:00 (the
latest). On Wednesdays the session starts with a short introduction via Zoom
and then questions can be asked via Zoom. Fridays are reserved for questions
via Zoom.

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Further Material via the Web Page

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When and where?

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What will you learn?
 Theoretical foundations and principles of the analysis and design of embedded
systems.
 Practical aspects of embedded system design, mainly software design.

The course has three components:

 Lecture: Communicate principles and practical aspects of embedded systems.
 Exercise: Use paper and pencil to deepen your understanding of analysis and
design principles .
 Laboratory (ES-Lab): Introduction into practical aspects of embedded systems
design. Use of state-of-the-art hardware and design tools.

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Please read carfully!!
 https://www.tec.ee.ethz.ch/education/lectures/embedded-systems.html

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What you got already…

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Be careful and please do not …

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You have to return the board at the end!

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Embedded Systems - Impact

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Embedded Systems
Embedded systems (ES) = information processing systems
embedded into a larger product

•Examples:

• Often, the main reason for buying is not information processing

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© www.braingrid.org
© www.openpr.com
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Many Names – Similar Meanings

© Edward Lee
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Embedded System
Embedded System

Hardware & Computation

Software reasoning
deciding
big data

CYBER Communication
WORLD
observing influencing
PHYSICAL
WORLD physical/biological/social
processes

Nature
Use feedback to influence the dynamics of the physical
world by taking smart decisions in the cyber world
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Reactivity & Timing
Embedded systems are often reactive:
 Reactive systems must react to stimuli from the system environment :

„A reactive system is one which is in continual interaction with is environment and

executes at a pace determined by that environment“ [Bergé, 1995]

Embedded systems often must meet real-time constraints:

 For hard real-time systems, right answers arriving too late are wrong. All other
time-constraints are called soft. A guaranteed system response has to be explained
without statistical arguments.

„A real-time constraint is called hard, if not meeting that constraint could

result in a catastrophe“ [Kopetz, 1997].

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Predictability & Dependability

CPS = cyber-physical system

“It is essential to predict how a CPS is going to behave under any

circumstances […] before it is deployed.”Maj14

“CPS must operate dependably, safely, securely, efficiently and in

real-time.”Raj10

Maj14 R. Majumdar & B. Brandenburg (2014). Foundations of Cyber-Physical Systems.

Raj10 R. Rajkumar et al. (2010). Cyber-Physical Systems: The Next Computing Revolution.
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Efficiency & Specialization
 Embedded systems must be efficient:
 Energy efficient
 Code-size and data memory efficient
 Run-time efficient
 Weight efficient
 Cost efficient

Embedded Systems are often specialized towards a certain

application or application domain:
 Knowledge about the expected behavior and the system environment at design
time is exploited to minimize resource usage and to maximize predictability and
reliability.

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Comparison
Embedded Systems: General Purpose Computing
 Few applications that are known at  Broad class of applications.
design-time.
 Not programmable by end user.  Programmable by end user.

 Fixed run-time requirements (additional  Faster is better.

computing power often not useful).

 Typical criteria:  Typical criteria:

 cost  cost
 power consumption  power consumption
 size and weight  average speed
 dependability
 worst-case speed

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Lecture Overview

1. Introduction to Embedded Systems

2. Software Development
3. Hardware-Software Interface
4. Programming Paradigms
Software Hardware-
5. Embedded Operating Systems
Software
6. Real-time Scheduling
7. Shared Resources
8. Hardware Components
Hardware 9. Power and Energy
10. Architecture Synthesis

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Components and Requirements by Example

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Components and Requirements by Example
- Hardware System Architecture -

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 High-Level Block Diagram View
low power CPU higher performance CPU
• enabling power to the rest of the system • sensor reading and motor control
• battery charging and voltage • flight control
measurement • telemetry (including the battery voltage)
• wireless radio (boot and operate) • additional user development
• detect and check expansion boards • USB connection

UART:
• communication protocol (Universal
Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter)
• exchange of data packets to and from
interfaces (wireless, USB)

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 EEPROM:
• electrically erasable programmable
High-Level Block Diagram View read-only memory
Acronyms: sensor board • used for firmware (part of data and
software that usually is not
• Wkup: Wakeup signal changed, configuration data)
• GPIO: General-purpose input/output • can not be easily overwritten in
signal comparison to Flash
• SPI: Serial Peripheral Interface Bus
• I2C: Inter-Integrated Circuit (Bus)
• PWM: Pulse-width modulated Signal
• VCC: power-supply

Flash memory:
• non-volatile random-access memory
for program and data
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High-Level Physical View

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High-Level Physical View

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 Low-Level Schematic Diagram View

LEDs

(1 page out of 3)
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 Low-Level Schematic Diagram View

(1 page out of 3) Motors

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High-Level Software View
 The software is built on top of a real-time operating system “FreeRTOS”.
 We will use the same operating system in the ES-Lab … .

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High-Level Software View

The software architecture supports

 real-time tasks for motor control (gathering sensor values and pilot commands,
sensor fusion, automatic control, driving motors using PWM (pulse width
modulation, … ) but also

 non-real-time tasks (maintenance and test, handling external events, pilot

commands, … ).

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High-Level Software View
Block diagram of the stabilization system:

sensor reading & transfer to cleaning and information

analog-digital processor preprocessing extraction from automatic control actuation
conversion sensors
on sensor
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Components and Requirements by Example
- Processing Elements -

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What can you do to increase performance?

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From Computer Engineering

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 From Computer Engineering
iPhone Prozessor A12
• 2 processor cores
- high performance
• 4 processor cores - less
performant
• Acceleration for
Neural Networks
• Graphics processor
• Caches

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What can you do to decrease power consumption?

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Embedded Multicore Example
Trends:
 Specialize multicore processors towards real-time processing and low power
consumption (parallelism can decrease energy consumption)
 Target domains:

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Why does higher parallelism help in reducing power?

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 System-on-Chip
Samsung Galaxy S6
– Exynos 7420 System on a Chip (SoC)
– 8 ARM Cortex processing cores
•Exynos 5422
(4 x A57, 4 x A53)
– 30 nanometer: transistor gate width

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How to manage extreme workload variability?

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 System-on-Chip
Samsung Galaxy S6
– Exynos 7420 System on a Chip (SoC)
– 8 ARM Cortex processing cores
•Exynos 5422
(4 x A57, 4 x A53)
– 30 nanometer: transistor gate width

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 From Computer Engineering
iPhone Prozessor A12
• 2 processor cores
- high performance
• 4 processor cores - less
performant
• Acceleration for
Neural Networks
• Graphics processor
• Caches

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Components and Requirements by Example
- Systems -

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Zero Power Systems and Sensors

Streaming information to
and from the physical world:

• “Smart Dust”
• Sensor Networks
• Cyber-Physical Systems
• Internet-of-Things (IoT)

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Zero Power Systems and Sensors

IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of Solid-State

Jan 2013, 229-243. Circuits, April 2017, 961-971.
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Trends …
 Embedded systems are communicating with each other, with servers or with the cloud.
Communication is increasingly wireless.

 Higher degree of integration on a single chip or integrated components:

 Memory + processor + I/O-units + (wireless) communication.
 Use of networks-on-chip for communication between units.
 Use of homogeneous or heterogeneous multiprocessor systems on a chip (MPSoC).
 Use of integrated microsystems that contain energy harvesting, energy storage, sensing,
processing and communication (“zero power systems”).
 The complexity and amount of software is increasing.

 Low power and energy constraints (portable or unattended devices) are increasingly important,
as well as temperature constraints (overheating).
 There is increasing interest in energy harvesting to achieve long term autonomous operation.

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