Robust Software Development

Course category
Software engineering
Training area
Quality
Course code
RBC-201
Duration
2 days
Additional information
Available for on-site delivery only. Can be delivered remotely or Face-to-Face.

This course targets the construction of robust, safe embedded systems using C. The focus is on developing robust, safe software in a concurrent, multi-threaded environment.

For each topic, the issues and consequences of a design or implementation will be explored, allowing the attendee to make reasoned choices when they are back in their work environment.

Pre-requisites:

A good knowledge of C. 

Who should attend:

This course is aimed at experienced C developers. 

Duration:

  • Two days

Course materials:

  • Delegate handbook

Hardware Manipulation

  • Pointer syntax and semantics (review)
  • Hardware access via pointers
  • Bit-field structures
  • Issues with bit-field structures (interpretation, padding, etc)
  • Hardware access using structures
  • Issues with structures for hardware access

State-machine Fundamentals

  • Reactive objects and modal behaviour
  • State transitions
  • Doing work in the state machine

Function Pointers 

  • Function pointer syntax
  • Polymorphic code 
  • Issues with polymorphic code 
  • State machine implementation 

Memory Management 

  • Problems with dynamic memory (overview)
  • Fixed block allocation schemes 
  • Tuning issues with fixed-block allocators 

Numerical Issues 

  • Problems with fixed-point numbers
  • Problems with floating-point numbers 
  • The MISRA-C Essential Types model 

Exception Handling 

  • What is an exception? 
  • The 'four layers of exception' – Ignore, Handle, Degrade and Halt 
  • Defining an exception strategy 

Interrupts 

  • The need for interrupts 
  • Understanding priority 
  • Interrupts as pseudo-concurrency 
  • Internal and external interrupt controllers 
  • Interrupt service routine programming 

Multi-tasking 

  • Tasks, threads, processes and platforms 
  • Context switching
  • Scheduling methods 
  • Task creation 

Mutual Exclusion  

  • Race conditions and critical sections 
  • Simulating critical sections
  • Priority inversion 
  • Recursive deadlock 
  • Cyclic dependency deadlock 

Task Synchronisation 

  • The problem with busy-waiting 
  • Condition variables 
  • The Monitor pattern