Designing Hardware And Software For Reuse A Handbook For Embedded Engineers And Programmers

"Design reuse" refers to the development of a piece of a design, whether hardware or software, that can then be used in additional designs. Although reuse has been a standard in the software world for many years, it's a different story in the world of embedded systems, where "roll your own" has been the typical design philosophy. Conventional wisdom has maintained that each embedded system project has so many quirks and individual design features/limitations that trying to design hardware and/or software modules for reuse on many different designs would lead to dire consequences, such as using too much memory or unpredictable execution times. However, this picture is changing rapidly, as more and more complex controllers and systems-on-chip (SoCs) are being used in embedded designs, requiring more design time and overhead. Many manufacturers and designers of embedded products are now looking to design-for-reuse (DFR) techniques to save money and bring products to market quicker. This handbook, by an embedded engineer with over 20 years of experience, presents practical design-for-reuse information and techniques using the most popular embedded hardware and software tools and platforms currently available. Many details are provided on selecting and using the proper tools from a DFR standpoint. Case studies of actual product designs illustrate the principles presented. A main focus of the book is the use of open source tools in DFR, a trend which has become widespread in the embedded industry only recently. Included is a tutorial covering installation, configuring, and use of the open source GNU Compiler Collection under Windows to build software applications for ARM-core based platforms such as the Palm, the Gameboy Advance console and a variety of ARM development boards, such as Motorola's DragonBall MX dev board, Intel's X-Scale dev board and Atmel's new AT91 family of dev boards. All source code is provided on the accompanying CD-ROM.Fowler, Michael is the author of 'Designing Hardware And Software For Reuse A Handbook For Embedded Engineers And Programmers', published 2007 under ISBN 9780750677912 and ISBN 0750677910.