Education in Embedded Systems - 1

MSc in Embedded Systems at Delft University of Technology (or TU – Delft)

TU – Delft is one of the college which offers MSc in Embedded Systems. The course is jointly offered by three Dutch universities; TU Delft, TU Eindhoven and TU Twente, and it’s called as 3TU program. I liked the course structure and it’s designed with a lot of thought into why there should be a separate course on Embedded Systems at first place.

The main reason for having a separate course on Embedded Systems is that in ES field an engineer is required to posses system level skills in a wide range of disciplines such as computer science, electrical engineering, real –time computing, system architecture, control engineering, signal processing, security and privacy, computer networking, mathematics, hardware, sensors and actuators. Thus to create these multidisciplinary skills it requires fundamental change in education and ES course emerged.

Course Overview:
Duration: 2 Years (120 EC)
Approximate cost for one year: Tuition Fees: € 8600 and Living expenses: € 7750

Few stages in the course,
1. Homologation
This phase is prerequisite phase, here a student from Electrical background can take CS courses and vice versa.

2. Compulsory courses
Total of 30 EC (European Credits defined through European Credits Transfer System ECTS) been allotted to 6 core courses.
a. System Validation (formal methods, model checking)
b. Software testing and Quality Engineering (testing in large Embedded Systems)
c. Real time systems
d. Performance Analysis (performance modeling of computation and communication)
e. Embedded Systems
f. Embedded Computer Architecture (contemporary embedded processor, microcontrollers)

I think the design of the course is such that it covers mainly all important areas of ES. The courses on System Validation and Testing are very important as Testing and Validation consumes around half of the resources in development life cycle.

3. Specialization
There are various tracks in which student can specialize, which are
a. Embedded Software
b. Embedded Computer Architecture
c. Embedded Circuits and Systems
d. Embedded Networking

4. MSc Thesis
And finally there is MSc thesis which is of 40 EC, which can be done either in industry or in academia.

3TU Program:
As the MSc program is jointly offered by three universities, a student joining either of the college automatically gets admitted to other two universities. The core structure of course remains same at each university but the research focus is different at each of them.

For example, Delft has more focus on Embedded Software and System level engineering rather than component level engineering which is usually done in Computer Engineering courses.

Personal Comments:
1. The course content is excellent, hard to find similar course any where in the world (believe me). From industry perspective it covers all the required subjects would help to develop a System level skills.
2. For research work, the computer engineering dept at Delft offers many projects especially in the areas of Reconfigurable computing. Also one can look at Embedded Systems Lab (ESL) at TU / e.
3. Delft is one of biggest and oldest engineering schools around and a member of prestigious IDEA group. As it’s the advantageous with all big schools, here at Delft too student can look forward to work with Aerospace dept on new satellite project (similar to Delfi) or Software engineering dept to work on Static code analyzers. Thus for a student interested in Core engineering, this is the place I would say.

Finally If any one is interested in Embedded Systems and wants to pursue higher studies in this area then this is one college not to miss applying for. Fortunately I knew about this course and I applied and received an admit too. For more information go through the links below.

Links:
1. Official site of ES dept:
http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=11b86a67-fc3e-4daa-81e9-a1cbbda52847〈=en
2. Delft curriculum on Embedded Systems:
http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~gross/Publications/Gross_2006_WESE.pdf
3. TU Delft- Detailed Costs for M. Sc. 2009-2011:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pwxvvhp3oPpVQj1pMlcJxLg&gid=1
4. 3TU Course site:
http://www.3tu.nl/en/education/embedded_systems/
5. IDEA league site:
http://www.idealeague.org/