Real-Time Computing in Software Engineering Education

An incredible growth of the computing power, advances in microelectronics, telecommunication, and new software tools and techniques do allow us to have computers controlling, displaying, supporting, even, as some would like to have, thinking for us. In addition to a well established real time applications in military, aerospace, aviation, and medical systems, nowadays the consumer electronics is an area that uses more and more systems with real-time features. For all these systems time criticality and determinism are important, but often safety and reliability are of an equal importance. The software development of such systems requires skills and knowledge exceeding the standards offered by colleges and universities in most computer science and engineering programs. Real-time instruction in majority of electrical and control engineering program focus on hardware and control algorithms. Computer science and software engineering programs tend to focus on issues of software design and theoretical aspects of operating systems schedulability. It is not so often, that the students get proper background to develop the target system application software with full understanding of the hardware and operating system implications. Future software developers must understand the basic concepts distinguishing real-time applications from standard non-real-time applications. The industry needs engineers with knowledge of specialized time-critical reactive systems. Concepts developing software in a host-target environment, software timing, multitasking, intertask synchronization and communication, resource contention, external devices and interrupt handling need to be taught. Graduates who understand how the application software interacts with the operating system and the environment are in high demand.