Functional Programming for Embedded Systems

Embedded Systems application development has traditionally been carried out in low-level machine-oriented programming languages like C or Assembler that can result in unsafe, error-prone and difficult-to-maintain code. Functional programming with features such as higher-order functions, algebraic data types, polymorphism, strong static typing and automatic memory management appears to be an ideal candidate to address the issues with low-level languages plaguing embedded systems. However, embedded systems usually run on heavily memory-constrained devices with memory in the order of hundreds of kilobytes and applications running on such devices embody the general characteristics of being (i) I/O- bound, (ii) concurrent and (iii) timing-aware. Popular functional language compilers and runtimes either do not fare well with such scarce memory resources or do not provide high-level abstractions that address all the three listed characteristics. This work attempts to address this gap by investigating and proposing high-level abstractions specialised for I/O-bound, concurrent and timing-aware embedded-systems programs. We implement the proposed abstractions on eagerly-evaluated, statically-typed functional languages running natively on microcontrollers. Our contributions are divided into two parts - Part 1 presents a functional reactive programming language - Hailstorm - that tracks side effects like I/O in its type system using a feature called resource types. Hailstorm’s programming model is illustrated on the GRiSP microcontroller board.Part 2 comprises two papers that describe the design and implementation of Synchron, a runtime API that provides a uniform message-passing framework for the handling of software messages as well as hardware interrupts. Additionally, the Synchron API supports a novel timing operator to capture the notion of time, common in embedded applications. The Synchron API is implemented as a virtual machine - SynchronVM - that is run on the NRF52 and STM32 microcontroller boards. We present programming examples that illustrate the concurrency, I/O and timing capabilities of the VM and provide various benchmarks on the response time, memory and power usage of SynchronVM

Embedded real-time software using TinyTimber : reactive objects in C

Embedded systems are often operating under hard real-time constraints. Such systems are naturally described as time-bound reactions to external events, a point of view made manifest in the high-level programming and systems modeling language Timber. In this licensiate thesis we demonstrate how the Timber semantics for parallel reactive objects translates to embedded real-time programming in C. This is accomplished through the use of a minimalistic Timber Run-Time system, TinyTimber. The TinyTimber kernel ensures state integrity, and performs scheduling of events based on given time-bounds in compliance with the Timber semantics. In this way, we avoid the volatile task of explicitly coding parallelism in terms of traditional processes/threads/semaphores/monitors, and side-step the delicate task to encode time-bounds into process/thread priorities. Moreover, a simulation environment is developed that enables the behaviour of a heterogeous distributed system, consisting of both the hardware and the Timber based embedded software to be observed under a model of the environment. Furthermore, pedagogic issues of reactive objects have been studied in the context of higher education. First results indicate that the use of TinyTimber give students an increased ability to understand and solve embedded programming assignments. Finally, the TinyTimber kernel implementation is discussed. Performance metrics are given for a number of representative platforms, showing the applicability of TinyTimber to small embedded systems. A comparison to a traditional system tick driven, thread based, real-time kernel shows that TinyTimber provides tighter timing and a simpler (yet comprehensive) API. In conclution we find that the use of Reactive Objects in C, realized through TinyTimber is a viable alternative for Embedded Real-Time Programming.Godkänd; 2007; 20071214 (ysko)CASTT - Centre for Automotive Systems Technologies and Testin

TinyTimber, reactive objects in C for real-time embedded systems

Embedded systems are often operating under hard real-time constraints. Such systems are naturally described as time-bound reactions to external events, a point of view made manifest in the high-level programming and systems modeling language Timber. In this paper we demonstrate how the Timber semantics for parallel reactive objects translates to embedded real-time programming in C. This is accomplished through the use of a minimalistic Timber Run-Time system, TinyTimber (TT). The TT kernel ensures state integrity, and performs scheduling of events based on given time-bounds in compliance with the Timber semantics. In this way, we avoid the volatile task of explicitly coding parallelism in terms of processes/threads/semaphores/monitors, and side-step the delicate task to encode time-bounds into priorities. In this paper, the TT kernel design is presented and performance metrics are presented for a number of representative embedded platforms, ranging from small 8-bit to more potent 32-bit micro controllers. The resulting system runs on bare metal, completely free of references to external code (even C-lib) which provides a solid basis for further analysis. In comparison to a traditional thread based real-time operating system for embedded applications (FreeRTOS), TT has tighter timing performance and considerably lower code complexity. In conclusion, TinyTimber is a viable alternative for implementing embedded real-time applications in C today.Godkänd; 2008; 20071005 (pln)CASTT - Centre for Automotive Systems Technologies and Testin