When first confronted with a new project that requires the use of at least one type of MCU, it can seem like an overwhelming task to. As we saw in Chapter 1, What are Embedded Systems?, there is a large number of MCUs to choose from, even if we limit ourselves to just those that have been released recently.
It may seem obvious to start by asking how many bits one needs, as in selecting between 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit MCUs, or something as easy to quantify as clock speed, but these metrics are sometimes misleading and often don't lend themselves well to narrowing down the product selection. As it turns out, the parent categories are availability of sufficient I/O and the integrated peripherals to make the hardware happen in a lean and reliable way, as well as processing power tailored to the requirements faced at design-time and predicted to emerge throughout the product life-time.
So in more detail we need to answer questions like these:
- Peripherals: Which...