Chapter 4 - DSpace at Waseda University

Chapter 1
huge losses in cost. For instance, an electric power’s system error resulted in power outage in
the whole of New York City. Also people tend to think that the high quality program is
related to the development period. However, if the period of development is more delayed
than expected, the quality degradation is easy to occur. Furthermore shortening the period of
development usually causes many problems. Therefore, developers are needed a strong
analysis ability to complete a project without any problems. In this paper, we will focus on
how to trace problems in kernel and how to solve the problems efficiently.
1.2 Challenge
When developing embedded systems, usually problems can be categorized in two groups –
the user level [59] and the kernel level. To solve a user-level problem, there are a lot of tools
for debugging. In contrast, when a problem occurs in the kernel level [7], it is much more
difficult to fix up than in the user-level. This is because tools for kernel development usually
provide minimum functions and in many cases the functions are not helpful to fix the
problems. Moreover, even though all the embedded systems are currently operate without
any problems, there is a possibility for an unexpected error to occur. There are no one-
hundred percent perfect systems. Even commercial embedded systems have a possibility to
occur kernel problems. Sometimes these problems usually do not find when developing
embedded systems. After commercialized as a product, however, it still has a possibility to
occur kernel problems. Furthermore, this unexpected small error causes inconvenience for
many users and a possibly life-threatening problem.
An embedded system’s project is usually complex and requires developers with a high level
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