An important resource, this book offers an introduction and overview of real-time systems: systems where timeliness is a crucial part of the correctness of the system. It contains a pragmatic overview of key topics (computer architecture and organization, operating systems, software engineering, programming languages, and compiler theory) from the perspective of the real-time systems designer and is organized into chapters that are essentially self-contained. In addition, each chapter contains both basic and more challenging exercises that will help the reader to confront actual problems.