CS 452/652 - Real-time Programming
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I hear the train a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend
And I ain't seen the sunshine
Since I don't know when...
Johnny Cash
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| Photo courtesy of y3285wan (W23) |
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Spring 2025
Important Note for Students Not Enrolled Yet
Official Course Outline: CS 452/652.
Registrar's Schedule of Classes
Communication
Piazza is used as the primary communication channel for announcements, clarifications, questions, discussions, etc. It is expected that all students are familiar with all material posted and discussed on Piazza. There are different Q&A for:
- announcements,
- questions, and
- reporting hardware problems.
Private posting is disabled.
For any personal matters, please email the instructor.
Accommodations
If a student requests a short-term absence, individual adjustments will be made to assignment deadlines and/or weighting depending on the particular circumstances.
Lecture Notes
Lecture notes will be posted here after class. They are telegraphic, so they are not a substitute for the lectures. But if you attend the lectures they will most likely be a good memory prosthetic.
- May 6, 2025 - Introduction and Overview
- May 8, 2025 - Devices and Trains
- May 13, 2025 - Polling Loops, Kernel, Tasks
- May 15, 2025 - ARM Processor, Context Switch
- May 20, 2025 - ABI, Coding, Kernel
- May 22, 2025 - Scheduling, Optimization, Message Passing
- May 27, 2025 - Producer/Consumer, Name Resolution, Measurements
- May 29, 2025 - Caching, Interrupts
- Jun 3, 2025 - Events, Clock, Idle
- Jun 5, 2025 - Software Design, Debugging
- Jun 10, 2025 - UART Interrupts
- Jun 12, 2025 - Train Velocity, Design Approach
- Jun 17, 2025 - Train Modelling
- Jun 19, 2025 - Realtime Scheduling
- Jun 24, 2025 - Student Presentations: Kernel Design
- Jun 26, 2025 - Student Presentations: Kernel Design
- Jul 3, 2025 - TC1 Demo Preparation
- Jul 8, 2025 - TC1 Demos - no class
- Jul 10, 2025 - Train Control
- Jul 15, 2025 - Latency and Priorities
- Jul 3, 2025 - TC2 Demo Preparation
- Jul 22, 2025 - TC2 Demos - no class
- Jul 24, 2025
- Jul 29, 2025
Assignments
Assignment A0 is to be completed independently by each student. Afterwards, groups of 2 students (or 3 in exceptional circumstances) work on the remaining assignments.
IMPORTANT: Late assignment submissions will not be accepted. Plagiarism detection software will be used. Students might be asked to meet with TAs and explain their code. See the course outline for further information about academic integrity and appeals. Also see Notes on Assignments.
Due dates below are tentative until the assignment is published.
| Assignment | Link to Assignment | Due Date | Notes
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| A0 | Polling Loop | Tue, May 13, 9:00am | Communication with Trains and Terminal
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| K1 | Kernel (Part 1) | Tue, May 27, 9:00am | Context-Switch, Task Scheduling
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| K2 | Kernel (Part 2) | Tue, Jun 3, 9:00am | Message Passing, Name Server
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| K3 | Kernel (Part 3) | Thu, Jun 12, 9:00am | Event Notification, Clock Server
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| K4 | Kernel (Part 4) | Tue, Jun 24, 9:00am | I/O Server(s)
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| KD | Kernel Design | Tue, Jun 24, 9:00am | In-Class Presentations on Jun 24 & 26
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| TC1 | Train Control (Part 1) | Tue, Jul 8, 9:00am | Demo: control one train
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| Project | Project Proposal | Tue, Jul 15, 9:00am | submitted for feedback, not graded
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| TC2 | Train Control (Part 2) | Tue, Jul 22, 9:00am | Demo: control multiple trains
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| Project | Final Project | Wed, Jul 30, 23:55pm | Demo: final project
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Final Exam
The final exam covers material from the entire course and is given as take-home exam.
It will be
scheduled by the Registrar.
for Thursday, Aug 14, 4pm - 6:30pm. The exam will be made available on Learn on Wednesday, Apr 13, 4pm.
Previous exams will be made available on Learn.
UW Final Exam Regulations
Math Faculty INC Grade Process
Resources
Lab
The lab room is MC 3018 and is for the exclusive use of CS 452/652 students. The access code is announced in class. Do not give the code to other students!
The usual rules apply, such as no food. Please see CSCF Teaching Lab Policies for details.
Most workstations in the main room run Ubuntu Linux with access to the regular linux.student.cs environment. The workstations connected to the Raspberry Pi computers run a slightly different Linux setup with a default login. Two of those are connected to train tracks. You can use the gtkterm terminal emulator to communicate with the Raspberry Pi via serial interface.
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi computers are custom-designed by Devon Merner of CSCF
and include a custom serial hat.
Train Set
The track and trains are controlled by sending commands via the serial interface.
Building and Running Code
Cross Compiler
In the linux.student.cs environment, the cross compiler is
installed at /u/cs452/public/xdev/bin/aarch64-none-elf-gcc. The
rest of the toolchain (g++, ld, objdump, readelf, etc.) is in the same
directory, following the same naming convention.
The cross compiler can also be downloaded from here.
Make sure to pick the right host platform and select 'AArch64 bare-metal' as
target platform.
Example Code
Sample code is available in the linux.student.cs environment at
/u/cs452/public/iotest. Please see the included README file for
further information. The example is also available here and as a pre-compiled image for testing.
Uploading
The Raspberry Pis in the lab use TFTP to download an image specific to their
MAC address, which is displayed on top of the Pi. An image can be uploaded
for a specific Pi using the web interface at
https://cs452.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca. Authentication is via standard UW
credentials (including possible 2FA).
When hovering over the user name in top-right corner of the web interface
and clicking on 'Profile', one can create and/or download an API token. With
this token stored in a local plaintext file named
$HOME/.cs452_token, the script at
/u/cs452/public/tools/upload.sh can alternatively be used to upload
an image for a specific Pi by specifying its MAC address. This method only
works from on-campus computers or when using UW's VPN.
Make sure to not interfere with another person currently using a particular
Pi!
Other
Curiosities