Embedded Systems: UCSC Silicon Valley extension

I came across this nice certificate course on Embedded Systems at UCSC, the course structure seems to cover all aspects of embedded system design and especially tuned for working professionals. 

The comprehensive program at UCSC Extension will equip you with the hands-on experience and practical know-how to fully master embedded design. Instruction is geared to working professionals in a wide variety of fields, including:

• Hardware design--system architecture, board design, FPGA, and SoC

• Software development--real-time embedded programming, Linux-based systems

• Digital signal processing--DSP and DV--and image processing

• Mobile device design and programming

• Interface protocols and design techniques

The web link for the program is http://www.ucsc-extension.edu/programs/embedded-systems

Education in Embedded Systems – 2

MSc and MAS (Master of Advanced studies) in Embedded Systems courses are offered at ALaRI (Advanced learning and research institute), Switzerland.

This is another place in Europe which offers specific education in Embedded Systems (the first one being TU Delft, read here for more info). It offers virtually every courses on Embedded Systems and there are many courses which I found only at ALaRI. And good part is that best professor and experts in the area comes and teaches you that subject. In this post I would cover on MSc course at ALaRI.

Course Overview:
Duration: 2 years (120 EC)
Approximate cost for one year: Tuition 8000 CHF (around 5300 Euro) and Living expenses 7000 CHF (around 4600 Euro)

Master project takes up 35% of 2years and remaining time is spent in Courses, seminars and other lab assignments.

Courses offered:
The following list contains only selected few courses offered, for list of all courses visit ALaRI homepage.

1. Architectures by M.G. Sami Politecnico di Milano, Italy
2. Software Compilers by S. Crespi Reghizzi Politecnico di Milano, Italy
3. Transforms Theory by A. Danani SUPSI Lugano, Switzerland
4. RTOS and Scheduling by L. Thiele ETH Zurich, Switzerland and M. Platzner University of Paderborn, Germany
5. Specification Languages by R. Lauwereins IMEC, Leuven, Belgium and M. Engel's FMTC, Belgium
6. Digital Signal Processing by M. Moonen IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
7. Embedded processor design and implementation by R. Leupers, Aachen University of Technology
8. VLIW Architectures by P. Faraboschi HP Labs Cambridge, USA
9. Microelectronics by C. Piguet CSEM, Neuchatel, Switzerland
10. Performance Evaluation by G. Serazzi Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Personally I like the course content very much and would like to cover many topics from it during my masters. If you are interested in higher studies in Embedded Systems, then ALaRI should be in your list of colleges to apply. Also you don't need GRE or TOEFL for application and there is no application fee !

Links:
1. ALaRI home page: http://alari.ch/
Browse through above page, very informative.

2. Student experience at ALaRI. Edulix thread: http://www.edulix.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=69510
You would require registration on Edulix before reading.

Training done at Conexant Systems

After completing my engineering from NIT, Trichy I joined as Software Engineer at Conexant Systems , Hyderabad Aug 2007. I was very happy about getting through Conexant as I knew the job would be challenging and provide me with plenty of new learnings.

About fifty odd freshers joined in Software domain at Conexant and there was proper training planned for us (they must have put a lot thought in design of the training content). It gave us very good idea on Embedded Systems, virtually covering all the topics in the area. I would say I was lucky to go through this excellent training, which provided me great platform to start off with my professional career.

It covered following aspects,

1. Effective Programming using C:
Topics covered: Basic programming; data structures such as arrays, linked list, graphs and trees; algorithms for sorting, searching and some graph algortithms; and a lab on all topics covered in theory.

Essentially it was similar to Data structures and Algorithm course done during engineering, but it was nice to revise again.

2. Embedded Systems Programming:
Topics covered: Intro to Embedded systems; Basics of RTOS; Software tools such as debugger, linker, compiler; Object file formats and how to make sense of it; OS Internals and drivers; Designing a Real time system, design modules and a Case study.

This was the best training session, as you would see it covers all the important topic in Embedded System programming. Many things learned from this training which are still useful.

3. ARM Architecture:
Topics covered: Intro to RISC, overview of ARM architecture, Thumb instruction set, Interrupts in ARM, Caches and memory mapping etc.

This was another very good training, Embedded engineer must know about ARM architecture as it is most widely used in industry. I liked the concepts of Thumb instruction set and instruction decoding in ARM.

4. Linux Kernel Internals:
Topics covered: All the chapters from book Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love

I had good idea of Linux kernel before joining Conexant, but this session cleared all the doubts and gave a good overview of writing a device driver for Linux. Must buy / read book by Robert love.

5. Socket Programming:
Topics covered: This session gave overall idea about networking and how one can write socket in C.

6. Introduction to Testing:
Topics covered: This session gave idea about how testing fits into large picture, why testing is very important, and made sure that engineer does not neglects testing and considers them as important as development.

There were some sessions by HR on topics Assertive communication and team building exercise. Some good videos were shown for Assertive communication techniques such as fogging, broken record, Negative inquiry etc. Communication is as important as technical skills in industry (which many times people tend to neglect), and one has to improve upon it constantly.

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/