Characteristics / Qualities of Embedded System.

 Throughput : ES may need to handle a lot of data in a short period of

time.
 Response : ES may need to react to events quickly.
 Tesability : Setting up equipment to test Embedded Software can be
difficult
 Debugability : Without a screen or keyboard, finding out what the
software is doing wrong (other than not working) is a problem.
 Reliability : ES must be able to handle any situations without human
intervention.
 Memory space : memory is limited on ES, your software and data to fit
into whatever memory exists.
 Program Installation : you will need special tools to get your Software
into ES.
 Power Consumption : Portable systems must run on battery power,
and the software/hardware in these systems must conserve power.
 Processor Hogs : Computing that requires large amounts of CPU time
can complicate the response problem.
 Cost : Reducing the cost of Hardware is a concern in many ES
projects, Software often operates on hardware that is barely adequate
for the job.
 Processor Architecture Features

Von-Neuman Architecture:  c’s based on the Von-Neuman architecture have

a single “data” bus that is used to fetch both instructions and data. Program
instructions and data are stored in a common main memory. When such a
controller addresses main memory, it first fetches an instruction, and then it
fetches the data to support the instruction. The two separate fetches slows up
the controller’s operation.

Harvard Architecture: Mc’s based on the Harvard architecture have separate

data bus and an instruction bus. This allows execution to occur in parallel. As
an instruction is being “prefetched”, the current instruction is executing on the
data bus. Once the current instruction is complete, the next instruction is
ready to go. This prefetched theoritically allows, for much faster execution
than Von-Neuman architecture, but these is some added silicon complexity.

Complex Instruction Set Computer : CISC

Almost all of today’s MC’s are based on the CISC concept. The typical CISC MC has well
over 80 instructions, many of them very powerful and very specialized for specific control
tasks. It is quite common for the instructions to all behave quite differently. Some might
only operate on certain address spaces or registers, and others might only recognize
certain addressing modes.
Advantages of CISC:
The advantages of the CISC architecture is that many of the instructions are macro-like,
allowing the programmer to use one instruction in place of many simpler instructions.

Reduced Instructions Set computer : RISC

The industry trend for MP design is for RISC designs. This is beginning to spill over into the
MC market. By implementing fewer instructions, the chip designed is able to dedicate some of
the precious silicon real – estate for performance enhancing features.
The benefits of RISC design simplicity are smaller chips , smaller pin count, and very low
power consumption.

Typical features of RISC Processor:

- Harvard Architecture: - Simultaneous access of programme and data.
- Over lapping of some operations for increased
processing performance.
- Instruction Pipeling increases execution speed.

Super MCs have the following features : (Eg. MC68332)

- Watchdog timers
- Sleep / Wakeup modes
- Power Management
- Powerful I/O Channels.

Advanced Memory Options:

# EEPROM : Relatively Slow, But economical.
# FLASH (EPROM) : NV Program Memory. Faster than EEPROM.
# Battery Backup SRAM : Much Faster than NV memory. Therefore suited
for high performance application.
 Typical system breakdown and CSCI decomposition

System
(SSS)

Segment Segment
(SSS) (SSS)

CSCI IRS HWCI HWCI

(SRS) (PIDS)

CSCI IRS HWCI HWCI HWCI HWCI

(SRS) (PIDS) (CIDS)

CSCI IRS HWCI

(SRS)

CSC CSC CSC

CSC CSC CSC CSU CSU CSC CSC

csu CSC CSC csu csu