Embedded System Design on a Shoestring: Achieving High Performance with a Limited Budget

In this practical guide, experienced embedded engineer Lewin Edwards demonstrates faster, lower-cost methods for developing high-end embedded systems. With today's tight schedules and lower budgets, embedded designers are under greater pressure to deliver prototypes and system designs faster and cheaper. Edwards demonstrates how the use of the right tools and operating systems can make seemingly impossible deadlines possible.

Designer's Guide to Embedded Systems Development shares many advanced, in-the-trenches design secrets to help engineers achieve better performance on the job. In particular, it covers many of the newer design tools supported by the GPL (GNU Public License) system. Code examples are given to provide concrete illustrations of tasks described in the text. The general procedures are applicable to many possible projects based on any 16/32-bit microcontroller. The book covers choosing the right architecture and development hardware to fit the project; choosing an operating system and developing a toolchain; evaluating software licenses and how they affect a project; step-by-step building instructions for gcc, binutils, gdb and newlib for the ARM7 core used in the case study project; prototyping techniques using a custom printed circuit board; debugging tips; and portability considerations.

Introduction; Before You Start: Fundamental Decisions; The GNU Toolchain; Gas: The GNU Assembler; Ld: GNU Linker; Converting Files with Objcopy; Objdump: Check Your Executable's Layout; Size: Check the Load Size of Your Executable; Gdb: The GNU Debugger; Example Firmware Walkthroughs and Debugging Techniques; Portability and Reliability Considerations; Useful Vendors and Other Web Resources; Index of Companion Website Contents; Acknowledgements