System Construction (252-0286-00L)

Felix Friedrich

with Guest Lectures by Paul Reed

Course at Computer Science Department, ETH Zürich, HS 2015

News

• 2016-11-23 (fof): Slides 9, Exercise 9 and Solution 8 online

Time and Place

Lecture	Tuesday 13:15 - 15:00	CAB G 56
Lab	Tuesday 15:15-17:00	CAB G 56

Slides

This is a plan. No plan survives contact with reality.

Week	Date	Slides	Exercises
1	20.9.	Case Study 1 ARM Architecture and the Lab's Hardware (BCM 2836 on a Raspberry Pi 2)	Minimal ARM Setup, Linking, GPIO control
2	27.9.	Cross Development, Programming Language Oberon, Linking and Loading	Linking, Loading and Unloading
3	4.10.	Memory Management	Virtual Memory Management
4	11.10.	IRQs and Scheduling	Watchdog
5	18.10.	IO: SPI, MMC/SD Cards, RS232	SPI Driver
6	25.10.	Case Study 2: A2 Interrupt System (Intel x86 APIC), Active Oberon Computing Model, A2 Kernel	Assignment 5 continued; Debugging a Kernel
7	1.11.	Stack Management, Context Switches, Activity Management, Priority Inheritance, Generic Object File Format	Assignment 6 continued; Implementing Priority Inheritance
8	8.11.	Lock Free Kernel: Lock-freedom, Memory-model, Contention and backoff, Memory reuse and ABA problem, Non-blocking (scheduling) queue, Cooperative multitasking and Thread local storage.	Assignment 7 continued.
9	15.11.	Lock Free Kernel (2)	Lock free implementation of a Mutex (RPI / x86)
10	22.11.	Case Study 3: RISC (Guest Lectures by Paul Reed) Custom Designed Single Processor: The RISC architecture	Instruction Timer
11	29.11.	Project Oberon on RISC	Screensaver, Wireless Network Traffic Monitor, Network Time Client
12	6.12.	Case Study 4: Active Cells Custom Designed Systems On Chip. A Programming Model	Ex 10 ctd.
13	13.12.	Behind the Scenes of Active Cells. TRM Processor and Interconnects	Multicore Computing on FPGAs – Implementation of the Simon Game
14	20.12.	Some other (influencing) programming models and platforms	Ass 11 ctd, Exploring Engines

Lecture Summary

The lecture introduces and illustrates principles of computer system construction with four case studies. In the first part of the lecture, the necessary knowledge to build systems on contemporary, off-the-shelf hardware is presented for both single-core and multi-core systems. In the second part of the lecture it will be presented how a complete system (based on FPGA) is constructed from scratch, incorporating lessons learned in the first part from mastering the pragmatic complexities of today's commodity hardware.

• Case Study 1: Embedded System
  • Safety-critical and fault-tolerant monitoring system
  • Based on an auto-pilot system for helicopters
• Case Study 2: Multi-Processor Operating System
  • Universal operating system for symmetric multiprocessors
  • Shared memory approach
  • Based on Language-/System Codesign (Active Oberon / A2)
• Case Study 3: Custom designed Single-Processor System
  • RISC Single-processor system designed from scratch
  • Hardware on FPGA
  • Graphical workstation OS and compiler (Project Oberon)
• Case Study 4: Custom-designed Mult-Processor System
  • Special purpose heterogeneous system on a chip
  • Masssicely parallel hard- and software architecture based on message passing
  • Focus: dataflow based applications

Exercises

We provide tutorial-like exercises in a block of two hours each week (Tuesday 3pm - 5pm after the lecture).

• Exercise material and hardware is provided using a repository
• Please bring your notebook with you.
• More information via email and in the first lecture

Literature and Documentation

• Project Oberon - The Design of an Operating System and Compiler, N. Wirth and J. Gutknecht
• Compiler Construction, N. Wirth
• Grundlagen und Techniken des Compilerbaus, N. Wirth, 3. bearbeitete Auflage, Oldenbourg Wissensch.Vlg, 2011.
• Computer Systems, Bryant / O'Hallaron, Pearson Education
• The Active Object System - Design and Multiprocessor Implementation, P. Muller, Diss ETH.
• Combining Lock-Free Programming with Cooperative Multitasking for a Portable Multiprocessor Runtime System, Florian Negele, Diss ETH.

Contact

felix.friedrich(at)inf.ethz.ch, Tel. 044 632 8312

[ Computer Science Department ]