Acknowledgments

This book is the outcome of more than 10 years of research and teaching activity in the field of real-time operating systems and real-time control systems. During this time, we have been positively influenced by many other people we came in contact with, both from academy and industry. They are too numerous to mention individually, but we are nonetheless indebted to them for their contribution to our professional growth.

A special thank you goes to our university students, who first made use of the lecture notes this book is based upon. Their questions, suggestions, and remarks were helpful to make the book clearer and easier to read. In particular, we would like to thank Antonio Barbalace for his advices about Linux internals.

We would also like to express our appreciation to our coworkers for their support and patience while we were busy with the preparation of the manuscript. A special mention goes to one of Ivan’s past teachers, Albert Werbrouck, who first brought his attention to the wonderful world of embedded systems.

Last, but not least, we are grateful to Richard Zurawski, who gave us the opportunity to write this book. We are also indebted to the CRC Press publishing and editorial staff: Nora Konopka, Jim McGovern, Laurie Schlags, and Jessica Vakili. Without their help, the book would probably not exist.