Open Source Embedded System Design - LEVEL I and LEVEL II (CP215)

Synopsis

The demand for engineers in communication-enabling technologies, who can contribute quickly upon graduation or entering the field, is increasing in tandem with the growth in communication industries and reduction in product time-to-market. Shortage of relevant skill sets are prevalent among young engineers due to the complexities of theories, lack of exposure to relevant industry tools and missing domain knowledge in various functions within the communication-enabling industries.

DreamCatcher Certification Program covers a comprehensive domain area in communication-enabling technologies, ranging from semiconductor materials and devices, circuit designs and tests, and, system integration, deployment, testing and commissioning. In collaboration with global technology partners and experts, DreamCatcher Certification Program is designed to help benchmark the expertise level of engineers working in these fields. It also provides an alternative development path for professionals to attain the relevant expertise to work in these challenging fields which see constant change of devices, systems, protocols and standards.

University typically emphasizes on the broad coverage of theories and concepts while on-the-job-training emphasizes on the ability to operate relevant industry tools. DreamCatcher Certification Program emphasizes on a balanced coverage of industry tools, domain knowledge and relevant theories and concepts for the development of specific domain expertise as illustrated below. This balanced approach will equip engineers with relevant skills to contribute more effectively when entering a specific technical field.



DreamCatcher Certification Program value propositions to young engineers and professionals are: 

• To gain exposure to the state-of-the-art technologies, industry tools and software 
• To gain expose to industry standard practices through case studies and projects 
• To acquire knowledge and skills through a structured and extensive curriculum designed by industry experts and endorsed by global technology leaders 
• To gain reassurance that his/her expertise meets industry-accepted standards, and that he/she has undertaken structured certification training program successfully, achieving the minimum benchmarked level. Therefore, certification serves as benchmark to expertise attained.

• "The instructor taught me in a much convenient way for me to understand, since this is my first experience with Linux" - 16 Aug 09
• "The instructor is very good and knowledgable in this field" - 16 Aug 09
• "Practical knowledge along with theoretical concepts" - 16 Aug 09
• "ARM9 architecture and how to use the ARM9 development board" - 22 Aug 09
• "The course is quite easy to be learned, to be understood, and to apply it into my future working environment" - 22 Aug 09
• "Comprehensive explanation by instructor" - 22 Aug 09
• "Nice, not too much spoon feeding. Although it's hard to solve problems by ourselves, we grow as we solve problems. It's a very good lesson." - 24 Aug 09
• "I am getting a chance to learn about linux and doing programming in linux" - 24 Aug 09

What You Will Learn

Upon successful completion of LEVEL I Certification, participants will be able 

• To have a strong overview of the domain area with appreciation of underlying concepts, processes, tools and techniques employed specifically to the domain; 
• To perform a prescribed range of functions involving known routines and procedures within the domain; 
• To perform in a range of varied activities where there is a clearly defined choice of actions with limited complexity and limited range of applicable options to be applied, and; 
• To have the relevant foundation to further acquire advanced skills within the domain.

Upon successful completion of LEVEL II Certification, participants will be able

• To have an in-depth understanding and appreciation of concepts, processes, tools and techniques employed specifically to the domain; 
• To perform analysis involving complex routines and procedures within the domain; 
• To perform technical decision-making activities involving a range of trade-off possibilities for technical task with limited complexity and limited range of applicable options to be applied; and 
• To have the relevant in-depth understanding of the domain to further undertake experiential learning through solving technical challenges with higher complexities.

Who Should Attend

Fresh graduates or engineers interested to advance their technical career in the fields of communication-enabling technologies.

Prerequisite

For admission to LEVEL I Certification, candidates should have tertiary education level in relevant fields as follows: 

• Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 
• Telecommunication Engineering, 
• Microelectronics Engineering, 
• Computer Engineering, 
• Software Engineering,

OR

3 years working experience in the relevant fields with other technical degree.


For admission to LEVEL II Certification, candidates should have tertiary education level in relevant fields as follows: 

• Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 
• Telecommunication Engineering, 
• Microelectronics Engineering, 
• Computer Engineering, 
• Software Engineering,

AND

3 years working experience in the relevant fields and pass pre-entry assessment, OR completed LEVEL I Certification.

Course Methodology

The participants are first taught the relevant theories in a classroom setting. The concepts are re-enforced through tutorial and case studies of how the theories are applied in real-life. Demonstration using the state-of-the-art design and testing tools will be carried out to illustrate various principles and techniques.

The participants are then taught the use of software and hardware tools which are de-facto for the chosen domain area. The concepts are re-enforced through practical exercises on the use of the tools to test and design relevant applications.

Having acquired both practical skills in tools and pre-requisite knowledge in the domain area, the participants are required to apply their knowledge through individual or group project work. The participants will then present their project, demonstrating desired performance vs actual result.

Course Duration

LEVEL I Certification
15 days, 7 hours/day, with a total contact of 105 hours

LEVEL II Certification
15 days, 7 hours/day, with a total contact of 105 hours

Course Structure

LEVEL 1 Certification

Introduction (OSED01-01)
Introduction to Linux, introduction to embedded Linux, introduction to open source.

GPL and Linux (OSED01-02)
GPL & licensing, open source, Linux in general, Linux in embedded systems, typical system architecture.

First Steps with the Shell (OSED01-03)
Console, shell, common Linux commands, getting help, strong security model, shell programming.

Intro to QEMU (OSED01-04)
What is QEMU, why it is useful, how to use it.

Linux on the ARM (OSED01-05)
ARM/Linux embedded system topology, system memory map, bootloader & 3-stage boot, modifying an ARM system.

The ARM Toolchain (OSED01-06)
Cross compilation/brief development overview, what is a toolchain, how to obtain and use it, how to compile and test ARM Linux programs, developing an application for QEMU...

Linux Kernel Modules (OSED01-07)
What are Linux kernel modules (LKMs), how LKMs are used, how to design and build our own LKMs.

Testing and Development (OSED01-08)
Multitasking with programs in the shell, beginners GDB, useful information.

ARM Processor and ARM9 Development Board (OSED01-09)
Introduction of ARM Processor, overview of the ARM9 Embedded Board.

The ARM9 AT91RM9200 Processor (OSED01-10)
AT91RM9200 processor architecture, memory address space allocation.

The ARM9 Development Board (OSED01-11)
ARM9 board memory interface design, ARM9 board I/O interfaced peripherals.

ARM9 Board Booting Process (OSED01-12)
Boot up sequence of ARM9 board, bootloader operation.

U-Boot Bootloader (OSED01-13)
U-Boot bootloader, features, flash memory programming.

Development Tools and Development Process (OSED01-14)
Embedded development system setup, cross toolchain, buildroot, kernel, user space program development.

Design Project (OSED01-15)
To sharpen trainees? embedded system development skills where they will be able to implement an embedded system using embedded Linux and ARM platform. To expose trainees to the complete toolchain in embedded system development. Trainees will be going through embedded system design flow, from initial design concept, design planning, design construction, design verification, to design documentation.

Hardware Tools Used
ARM9 Embedded System Development Board


LEVEL 2 Certification

Introduction (OSED02-01)

Building an ARM Kernel (OSED02-02)
Prepare system, the kernel source code, configuring the kernel, make the kernel, test the new kernel.

More on memory-mapped I/O (OSED02-03)
Memory-mapped devices, quick and dirty memory access, read from memory.

Applications Software (OSED02-04)
Obtaining software, compiling software, compiling library, compiling application, testing application.

Multitasking in a Program (OSED02-05)
Multitasking OS, fork, clone, scheduling, general OS scheduling, Linux scheduling, problems with multitasking, safe multitasking code, efficient coding for small systems.

Inter-Process Communication (OSED02-06)
Named pipes, blocking behaviour, handling data, IPC between machines, signalling.

Advanced LKM Topics (OSED02-07)
Data handling in the kernel, sleeping and awakening, registering an interrupt, interrupt handlers.

Other useful OSS (OSED02-08)
Useful open source tools, profiling, lint, ethereal, MinGW-32, wine, Electric fence, remote debugging with GDB, development environments, real-time extensions.

Networking and Internet (OSED02-09)
Internet technology, important Internet applications, Internet standards and RFCs, Networking: basic concepts, types of computer networks, switching, layered network architecture, internetworking devices, network topology, TCP/IP.

Application Layer and Socket Programming (OSED02-10)
Client-server model, socket, domain name system, telnet, FTP, web server, socket I/O, TCP client-server interaction, UDP client-server interaction.

Software for Embedded System (OSED02-11)
Requirement and features of software for embedded system, real-time, software quality, choice of programming language, use of C, building dependable embedded system, facets of dependability, design challenge.

Program, Data and Memory (OSED02-12)
Program and code compilation, data representation, application notes.

Design Project (OSED2-13)
A quick hands into porting a commercial grade product.

Hardware Tools Used
ARM9 Embedded System Development Board

Course Instructor(s)Mr Choo Wai Heng

Mr Choo graduated from UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK) with a First Class Honours degree in Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics) in 1992. He was a Malaysian Government scholarship holder. 

He started his career in Andersen Consulting before moving on to Hewlett-Packard/Agilent where he spent a total of 12 years in various functions. In HP, Mr Choo started off as a System Engineer in Computer Organization, providing engineering services for system hardware and operating systems such as HP-UX and MPE. 

To pursue his interest in the field of RF/Microwave, Mr Choo took up the position of Application Engineer in HP's Test and Measurement Organization. In this role, he provided technical expertise in the areas of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) and RF/Microwave by providing consulting, training, seminar presentation and custom solution projects to customers in Malaysia. He expanded his coverage to Southeast Asia region upon his promotion to the role of a Technical Consultant. 

Mr Choo then moved on to a management position where he was responsible in providing support services to Contract Manufacturing and Semiconductor customers. He expanded his role to become the Asia Regional Support Manager for Telecom Solutions where he led a team of System Engineers and Business Development Managers located across Asia Pacific and Japan in working with customers from the OSS industry. 

Today Mr Choo operates DreamCatcher Consulting, focusing on technical consulting, professional technical education and content development. 

Mr Choo lives in Penang, Malaysia with his wife and 2 children. His mother tongue is Chinese but he speaks and writes English and Malay fluently. He enjoys organic gardening and reading during his leisure hours.

Mr Koay Kah Hoe

Mr Koay studied Electrical Engineering at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and graduated with a B. Eng. (Hons) degree with First Class Honours in 1998. He was awarded the Intel Fellowship Grant to pursue research studies leading to the award of M. Eng. degree by the same university from 1998-2000. 

In 2000, Mr Koay started his career as a lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Multimedia University. He actively involved in various academic and administrative works in the faculty, including designing new subjects and updating existing subject syllabus for undergraduate as well as master courses. He held the position as Assistant Coordinator of Electronics Engineering program in the faculty. His research areas include digital VLSI design, FPGA architectures, and reconfigurable computing. He was granted the IRPA grant, a Malaysia government's R&D grant, to carry out his main research in reconfigurable computing. He also received equipment and software sponsorships from Altera Corporation and Xilinx Corporation to carry out research projects using FPGA through their university programs. Mr Koay was also active in Robocon, an annual robot contest among institutes of higher learning, since the first year the contest was held in 2002. He has helped the university team to win fruitful awards every year. 

With his expertise in both electronic hardware design and software programming, he has performed various external consultancy works including professional consultancy projects and short course teachings with companies like Malaysia Microelectronic Solutions Sdn Bhd and Agilent Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd. He also led MDeC funded Undergraduate Skills Program and Job Camp run by Dream Catcher. 

In 2008, Mr Koay joined Dream Catcher Consulting as Principal Consultant, focusing on professional technical education and technical consulting in digital electronics areas. 

Besides technology and education, Mr Koay's personal interests are movie-watching, jogging, and Internet surfing.