Book Image

Embedded Systems Architecture

By : Daniele Lacamera
Book Image

Embedded Systems Architecture

By: Daniele Lacamera

Overview of this book

Embedded systems are self-contained devices with a dedicated purpose. We come across a variety of fields of applications for embedded systems in industries such as automotive, telecommunications, healthcare and consumer electronics, just to name a few. 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. You will first be guided to set up an optimal development environment, then move on to software tools and methodologies to improve the work flow. You will explore the boot-up mechanisms and the memory management strategies typical of a real-time embedded system. Through the analysis of the programming interface of the reference microcontroller, you'll look at the implementation of the features and the device drivers. Next, you'll learn about the techniques used to reduce power consumption. Then you will be introduced to the technologies, protocols and security aspects related to integrating the system into IoT solutions. By the end of the book, you will have explored various aspects of embedded architecture, including task synchronization in a multi-threading environment, and the safety models adopted by modern real-time operating systems.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

The life cycle of an embedded project


Modern development frameworks, such as agile software development methodologies, recommend, among other best practices, splitting the work into smaller action points, and marking milestones through the project development, producing intermediate working deliverables. Each deliverable focuses on giving a prototype of the entire system, with the missing features temporarily replaced using dummy code.

These recommendations seem particularly effective on embedded projects. In an environment where every error could be fatal to the entire system, working on small action points, one at a time, is an efficient way to promptly identify defects and regressions while working on the code base, provided that a CI mechanism is in place from the early stages of the development.Intermediate milestones should be as frequent as possible, and for this reason, it is advisable to create a prototype of the final system as soon as possible in the development phase. This has...