Book Image

Embedded Systems Architecture - Second Edition

By : Daniele Lacamera
5 (1)
Book Image

Embedded Systems Architecture - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Daniele Lacamera

Overview of this book

Embedded Systems Architecture begins with a bird’s-eye view of embedded development and how it differs from the other systems that you may be familiar with. This book will help you get the hang of the internal working of various components in real-world systems. You’ll start by setting up a development environment and then move on to the core system architectural concepts, exploring system designs, boot-up mechanisms, and memory management. As you progress through the topics, you’ll explore the programming interface and device drivers to establish communication via TCP/IP and take measures to increase the security of IoT solutions. Finally, you’ll be introduced to multithreaded operating systems through the development of a scheduler and the use of hardware-assisted trusted execution mechanisms. With the help of this book, you will gain the confidence to work with embedded systems at an architectural level and become familiar with various aspects of embedded software development on microcontrollers—such as memory management, multithreading, and RTOS—an approach oriented to memory isolation.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Introduction to Embedded Systems Development
4
Part 2 – Core System Architecture
8
Part 3 – Device Drivers and Communication Interfaces
13
Part 4 – Multithreading

Low-power operating modes

Microcontrollers can execute in different power modes, switching from full performance to complete hibernation. A proper understanding of the microcontroller’s low-power modes is fundamental to designing systems with improved energy profiles. Each architecture provides specific power configurations, where the CPU or other buses and peripherals are disabled, as well as appropriate mechanisms to be used by the system software to enter and exit low-power modes.

In an ARM-based microcontroller, the terminology used for the different low-power modes can be summarized as follows:

  • Normal operation mode: Active components are selected through clock gating, and the clock is running at the desired frequency.
  • Sleep mode: The CPU clock is temporarily suspended, but all the peripherals keep functioning as in normal mode. As long as the CPU is not executing, there is a noticeable, even if marginal, amount of power saved in this mode. Execution can...