Considering the vast scope of this field, ranging from the automobile to consumer electronics and aerospace, the demand for this technology for product development and applications will also continue to grow over time. The use of electronic items is becoming more pervasive in everyone’s lives with the use of mobiles, home appliances and more recently use of insulin pumps inside the body, thus providing a chance for you to make a successful career in embedded systems. In this market, you can find the following two trends.
Embedded processors can be broken into two broad categories. Ordinary microprocessors (μP) use separate integrated circuits for memory and peripherals. Microcontrollers (μC) have on-chip peripherals, thus reducing power consumption, size and cost. In contrast to the personal computer market, many different basic CPU architectures are used, since software is custom-developed for an application and is not a commodity product installed by the end user. Both Von Neumann as well as various degrees of Harvard architectures are used. RISC as well as non-RISC processors are found. Word lengths vary from 4-bit to 64-bits and beyond, although the most typical remain 8/16-bit. Most architectures come in a large number of different variants and shapes, many of which are also manufactured by several different companies.