Benu: Operating System Increments for Embedded Systems Engineer's Education

Most of today's computer systems, including rapidly emerging embedded ones, rely on an operating system. Consequently, the development of embedded systems and related software often requires a deeper understanding of operating systems. This paper presents a new incrementally built operating system and a learning course formed around it. Each increment builds on the previous one and introduces new system elements, new concepts and solutions, and a new set of assignments for improving or extending operations or simply demonstrating its use. Increments and assignments are designed to extend theoretical and practical knowledge in the operating system domain, give experience with non-trivial software systems and their development tools, familiarize the learner with basic computer hardware components and demonstrate device driver construction. The audience targeted by this operating system and course materials includes advanced students with (basic) knowledge of computer architecture, programming and operating systems. In addition, materials may be used individually as part of a lifelong learning process.