The Electronics and Communication department of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon in collaboration with NIELIT (National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt. of India) organized a one day workshop on "Embedded Systems" on 20th October 2015 at the college campus. Forty four students of ECE, EEE, ECS, IT, CSE and CSIT department attended the workshop.

The workshop was inaugurated by Mr. Sanjeev Sood, Joint Director, NIELIT, Delhi in his introductory talk he gave a brief overview on NIELIT and various courses offered by them. He further added that the field of embedded system research is rich with potential mainly it combines two factors. First, the system designer usually has control over both the hardware design and the software design, unlike general-purpose computing. Second, embedded systems are built upon a wide range of disciplines, including computer architecture (processor architecture and microarchitecture, memory system design), compiler, scheduler/operating system, and real-time systems. Combining these two factors means that barriers between these fields can be broken down, enabling synergy between multiple fields and resulting in optimizations which are greater than the sum of their parts.

Mr. Ankur Kumar, Technical Officer, explained the career domains of Electronics in IT and Electronics. He gave a brief introduction of embedded system is a computer system with a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical system, often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. Embedded systems control many devices in common use today. 98 % of all microprocessors being manufactured are used in embedded systems.

Ms. Monica, senior faculty, guided the students for career in Embedded Technology and Mobile application development. She explained embedded systems are playing important roles in our lives every day, even though they might not necessarily be visible. Some of the embedded systems used every day control the menu system on television, the timer in a microwave oven, a cellphone, an MP3 player or any other device with some amount of intelligence built-in. In fact, recent poll data shows that embedded computer systems currently outnumber humans in the USA. Embedded systems are a rapidly growing industry where growth opportunities are numerous. She also said that Embedded systems are used in navigation tools like global positioning system (GPS), automated teller machines (ATMs), networking equipment, digital video cameras, mobile phones, aerospace applications, telecom applications, etc.

Practical session was handled by Mr. Pawan, Senior faculty, who gave the practical demonstration of the ATmega 16 microcontroller kit to the students. Before the Lab session he discussed with the participants embedded systems and real time operating systems (RTOS) and its features:

1. multitasking;

2. process threads that can be prioritized;

3. a sufficient number of interrupt levels.

He then explained the features of ATmega 16 microcontroller:

1. High-performance, Low-power AVR® 8-bit Microcontroller

2. Advanced RISC Architecture

- 131 Powerful Instructions 131 Powerful Instructions

- Most Single Most Single-clock Cycle Execution clock Cycle Execution

- 32 x 8 General Purpose Working Registers

- Fully Static Operation

- Up to 16 MIPS Throughput at 16 MHz

- On-chip 2-cycle Multiplier

3. High Endurance Non-volatile Memory segments

- 16K Bytes of In-System Self-programmable Flash program memory

- 512 Bytes EEPROM

- 1K Byte Internal SRAM

- Write/Erase Cycles: 10,000 Flash/100,000 EEPROM

- Data retention: 20 years at 85°C/100 t 25 C/100 years at 25°C(1)

- Optional Boot Code Section with Independent Lock Bits

In-System Programming by On-chip Boot Program

True Read-While-Write Operation

- Programming Lock for Software Security

Mr. Sanjeev Sood briefed about the different training Programs including Long Term courses, Project Training courses and various Govt. Sponsored Schemes on embedded system.

The workshop concluded with a question and answer session where the doubts of the students were cleared. Mrs. Dimple Saproo, HOD ECE gave the vote of thanks. Overall, the workshop was very much interactive and knowledgeable.