Welcome to EE202A, a course on Embedded and Real-time Systems in the EE Embedded Computing Systems field.

Announcements
10/1/03
 I will not be there for the lecture today. Instead, four of my research students will give mini-tutorials on various embedded system hardware and software platforms.
9/29/03
 The class has an enrollment limit of 25. If you have not been able to enroll, please just attend the class for the first couple of weeks as usually by then spaces open up as a result of many students dropping out. If you are dropping out, please drop out officially from the course on Ursa so that the spot is released.

 

This course web site is designed to complement the course lectures. Resources available here include lecture viewgraphs, handouts, solutions, and pointers to relevant resources on the web. Some material may have access restricted to UCLA students.

EE202A is a part of the Embedded Computing Systems graduate major field program in the EE Department.

Course Staff Information

Instructor: Prof. Mani Srivastava
Affiliation: UCLA, EE Department
Email: mbs@ee.ucla.edu
Room: 6731-H Boelter Hall
Telephone: +1-310-267-2098
Office Hours: MoWe 2PM-3PM or by appointment
 
Assistant: Marilyn Saunders
Email: marilyn@ea.ucla.edu
Room: 6731 Boelter Hall
Telephone: +1-310-825-2214
Office Hours: Mo-Fr 8AM-5PM

Please visit this web site frequently during the course for various announcements, and to download lecture viewgraphs (placed by the morning of the lecture) and to get information on papers assigned for reading. Also, explore the various links on the button panel to the left of this page for useful information relating to the course.

Time & Place

Lectures: MoWe 12:00PM-1:50PM, 5272 BH
Office Hours: MoWe 2:00PM-3:00PM, 6731-H Boelter Hall

Class Roster

Prerequisites

  • No prerequisite graduate courses
  • Knowledge of the following at advanced undergraduate level
    • digital hardware design
    • computer architecture
    • system software
    • algorithms and data structures
  • Following will be useful too…
    • digital signal processing
    • VLSI CAD tools
    • compilers and programming languages
  • Basically, I will assume that you know EVERYTHING that  a student in UCLA's EE/CE or CSE B.S. program is supposed to know.

Grading

  • One take home examination: 20%
    • 10th week or the weekend between Weeks 9 & 10.
    • 2-3 day take home
  • Home works (1 to 3): 20% total
    • analysis, simulation, programming, library/web research, paper reviews
  • Topic research: 15%
    • groups of 2-3 students
    • survey an area (topics and resources specified by me on a continual basis)
    • prepare slides and do a 30-35 minute presentation in the class
      • slides prepared jointly
      • either all students share the presentation or I will select randomly at the presentation time
    • prepare a web site that should contain a report based on your survey, a bibliography, and links to resources and of course your slides
    • this material is fair game for homework and exams!
  • Project: 25% effort/methodology/results, 7.5% report, 7.5% oral presentation = 40% total
    • software/hardware design, tools, analysis, simulation
    • implementation projects strongly encouraged
    • literature surveys unacceptable, bogus hand-wavy stuff won’t get you far
    • it is possible that risky or ambitious ideas may prove to be wrong - what matter is the quality of your effort and your approach
    • groups of 1-3 students depending on project complexity
    • up to 30 minute presentation during the finals week, like a conference talk with a demo
    • up to 12 page report in the style of a technical conference paper
    • use ACM’s template at http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.htm
  • Class participation: 5%
    • E.g. questions that you ask during lectures and student presentations

Readers & Textbooks

This being a  course in a rapidly evolving area, the lectures will be substantially based on papers from literature most of which can be located in on-line databases such as INSPEC (accessible through UC Library), IEEE eXplore, ACM digital library etc. There is no paper reader. I will hand out only those papers that are unavailable on-line. It is your responsibility to print and read the on-line papers before the lectures. Lecture material will also be drawn from various books and other resources.  See  the resources page for names of some books. There is no particular need to buy these books, although they are good books to have if you are doing research in the area.

On-line Submissions

In this course I rely on on-line submission of home works, paper reviews, and even the examination. At the same time, I do not want my mailbox to be bombarded my huge mail attachments. So, what you will need to submit is a URL by the deadline. Now, to avoid the problem of you sending me a URL but changing the underlying contents after the deadline, I would run a script that would automatically fetch the files soon after the deadline. For this to work, I need to know the URL in advance.

So, this is how the on-line submission will work.

  • Must be done as word, html, PDF, ascii files
  • One {word, pdf, html, ascii} file per problem, with a name such as pN.pdf where N = prob #
    • supporting files or subdirectories may have names such as pN_code.c
  • Store all the files and directories for HW #N in a directory called hwN where N=1,2,3,...
  • Archive the hwN directory using zip or tar or tar followed by gnuzip or compress
  • Upon extraction, your archive should yield a single top directory called hwN
  • For HW #1 only, send me email with a URL of the for http://<host>/<path>/hw1.{zip,tar,tgz,tZ}
  • For future homeworks I will assume that your submission is available by the deadline at http://<host>/<path>/hwN.{zip,tar,tgz,tZ}

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING SURE THAT YOUR SUBMISSION IS AT THE RIGHT URL.

Late Submissions

Unless I give an extension, late submissions for any assignment would carry a 50% (of whatever you score) penalty after the scheduled deadline, and a 100% penalty after 24 hours past the deadline.

Policy on Cheating and Plagiarism

  • My apologies if you are one of the vast majority of students who don’t resort to academic dishonesty
    but unfortunate incidents in my previous grad and undergrad courses
  • What is cheating & plagiarism?
  • Acting dishonestly, practicing fraud
    • Stealing or using (without my permission) other people’s writings or ideas
    • E.g. from other students, other sources such as web sites, solutions from previous offerings of this course etc.
    • Note that it doesn’t have to be literal copying – stealing ideas but presenting in a different style is still cheating and plagiarism.
  • You are also guilty if you aid in cheating & plagiarism
  • My policy: zero tolerance
    • HWs, paper presentation: zero score + one level reduction in course grade (e.g. A- becomes B-)
    • Exam, project: “F” grade for the course + report to Dean
    • More than 1 incident: : “F” grade for the course +  report to Dean
  • Moreover, please remember that you may have to face me in other exams (e.g. M.S. comprehensive, Ph.D. prelims, Ph.D. qualifiers) and professionally!
 
Contact: Mani Srivastava (mbs@ee.ucla.edu)