By Frank Vahid and Tony Givargis
Embedded computing systems have grown tremendously in recent years, not only in their popularity, but also in their complexity. This complexity demands a new type of designer, one who can easily cross the traditional border between hardware design and software design. After investigating the availability of courses and textbooks, we felt a new course and accompanying textbook were necessary to introduce embedded computing system design using a unified view of software and hardware. This textbook portrays hardware and software not as different domains, but rather as two implementation options along a continuum of options varying in their design metrics, like cost, performance, power, size, and flexibility. Three important trends have made such a unified view possible. First, integrated circuit (IC) capacities have increased to the point that both software processors and custom hardware processors now commonly coexist on a single IC. Second, quality compilers and program size increases have led to the common use of processor-independent C, C++, and Java compilers and integrated design environments (IDEs) in embedded system design, significantly decreasing the importance of the focus on microprocessor internals and assembly language programming that dominate most existing embedded system courses and textbooks. Third, synthesis technology has advanced to the point that synthesis tools have become commonplace in the design of digital hardware. Synthesis tools achieve nearly the same for hardware design as compilers achieve in software design: They allow the designer to describe desired functionality in a high-level programming language, and they then automatically generate an efficient custom-hardware processor implementation. The first trend makes the past separation of software and hardware design nearly impossible. Fortunately, the second and third trends enable their unified design, by turning embedded system design, at its highest level, into the problem of selecting and programming (for software), designing (for hardware), and integrating “processors.”
The first four chapters of this book strive to achieve the goal of presenting hardware and software in a unified way. These chapters stress that computations are carried out by processors. Many types of processors are available, including general-purpose processors (software), custom single-purpose processors (hardware), standard single-purpose processors
(peripherals), and so on. But nevertheless, they are all just processors, differing in their cost, power, performance, design time, flexibility, and so on, but essentially doing the same thing. Chapter 1 provides an overview of embedded systems and their design challenges. We introduce custom single-purpose processors in Chapter 2, emphasizing a top-down technique to digital design amenable to synthesis, picking up where many textbooks on digital design leave off. We introduce general-purpose processors and their use in Chapter 3, expecting this chapter to be mostly review for many readers, and ending by showing how to design a general-purpose processor using the techniques of Chapter 2. Chapter 4 describes numerous
standard single-purpose processors (peripherals) common in embedded systems. Chapters 5 and 6 introduce memories and interfacing concepts, respectively, to complete the fundamental knowledge necessary to build basic embedded systems. Chapter 7 provides a digital camera example, showing how we can trade off among hardware, software, and peripherals to achieve implementations that vary in their power, performance, and size. These seven chapters form the core of this book.
Freed from the necessity of covering the nitty-gritty details of a particular microprocessor’s internals and assembly language programming, this book includes coverage of some additional embedded systems topics. Chapter 8 describes advanced state machine computation models that are becoming popular when describing complex embedded system behavior. It also introduces the concurrent process model and real-time systems. Chapter 9 gives a basic introduction to control systems, enough to make students aware that a rich theory exists for control systems, and to enable students to determine when an embedded system is an example of a control system. Chapter 10 introduces a variety of popular IC technologies, from which a designer may choose for system implementation. Finally, Chapter 11 highlights various design technologies for building embedded systems, including discussion of hardware/software codesign, a user's introduction to synthesis (from behavioral down to logic levels), and the major trend toward design based on intellectual property (IP).
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Embedded computing systems have grown tremendously in recent years, not only in their popularity, but also in their complexity. This complexity demands a new type of designer, one who can easily cross the traditional border between hardware design and software design. After investigating the availability of courses and textbooks, we felt a new course and accompanying textbook were necessary to introduce embedded computing system design using a unified view of software and hardware. This textbook portrays hardware and software not as different domains, but rather as two implementation options along a continuum of options varying in their design metrics, like cost, performance, power, size, and flexibility. Three important trends have made such a unified view possible. First, integrated circuit (IC) capacities have increased to the point that both software processors and custom hardware processors now commonly coexist on a single IC. Second, quality compilers and program size increases have led to the common use of processor-independent C, C++, and Java compilers and integrated design environments (IDEs) in embedded system design, significantly decreasing the importance of the focus on microprocessor internals and assembly language programming that dominate most existing embedded system courses and textbooks. Third, synthesis technology has advanced to the point that synthesis tools have become commonplace in the design of digital hardware. Synthesis tools achieve nearly the same for hardware design as compilers achieve in software design: They allow the designer to describe desired functionality in a high-level programming language, and they then automatically generate an efficient custom-hardware processor implementation. The first trend makes the past separation of software and hardware design nearly impossible. Fortunately, the second and third trends enable their unified design, by turning embedded system design, at its highest level, into the problem of selecting and programming (for software), designing (for hardware), and integrating “processors.”
The first four chapters of this book strive to achieve the goal of presenting hardware and software in a unified way. These chapters stress that computations are carried out by processors. Many types of processors are available, including general-purpose processors (software), custom single-purpose processors (hardware), standard single-purpose processors
(peripherals), and so on. But nevertheless, they are all just processors, differing in their cost, power, performance, design time, flexibility, and so on, but essentially doing the same thing. Chapter 1 provides an overview of embedded systems and their design challenges. We introduce custom single-purpose processors in Chapter 2, emphasizing a top-down technique to digital design amenable to synthesis, picking up where many textbooks on digital design leave off. We introduce general-purpose processors and their use in Chapter 3, expecting this chapter to be mostly review for many readers, and ending by showing how to design a general-purpose processor using the techniques of Chapter 2. Chapter 4 describes numerous
standard single-purpose processors (peripherals) common in embedded systems. Chapters 5 and 6 introduce memories and interfacing concepts, respectively, to complete the fundamental knowledge necessary to build basic embedded systems. Chapter 7 provides a digital camera example, showing how we can trade off among hardware, software, and peripherals to achieve implementations that vary in their power, performance, and size. These seven chapters form the core of this book.
Freed from the necessity of covering the nitty-gritty details of a particular microprocessor’s internals and assembly language programming, this book includes coverage of some additional embedded systems topics. Chapter 8 describes advanced state machine computation models that are becoming popular when describing complex embedded system behavior. It also introduces the concurrent process model and real-time systems. Chapter 9 gives a basic introduction to control systems, enough to make students aware that a rich theory exists for control systems, and to enable students to determine when an embedded system is an example of a control system. Chapter 10 introduces a variety of popular IC technologies, from which a designer may choose for system implementation. Finally, Chapter 11 highlights various design technologies for building embedded systems, including discussion of hardware/software codesign, a user's introduction to synthesis (from behavioral down to logic levels), and the major trend toward design based on intellectual property (IP).
Read More/Download