This handbook provides a comprehensive reference for firmware developers looking to increase their skills and productivity. It addresses each critical step of the development process in detail, including how to optimize hardware design for better firmware. Topics covered include real-time issues, interrupts and ISRs, memory management (including Flash memory), handling both digital and analog peripherals, communications interfacing, math subroutines, error handling, design tools, and troubleshooting and debugging. The companion CD-ROM includes all the code used in the design examples and a searchable ebook version of the text.This book is not for the beginner, but rather is an in-depth, comprehensive one-volume reference that addresses all the major issues in firmware design and development, including the pertinent hardware issues.

From the Publisher:This technical dictionary will define all of the most-used words in the embedded systems field - over 2,500 terms. Designed to serve both a technical and non-technical audience, this book defines advanced terms in two steps. The first step is a general, contextual definition that will serve the needs of less technical readers. The second step covers information in language that is appropriate to a serious technical reader. Some terms reference an appendix of white papers of even more detail.

The building blocks of computing circuitry are logic circuits. Here we investigate some standard functions that will allow us to develop the architecture of a simple processing machine. Chapter 2 is a primer of logic circuit design; examining both combinational and sequential SSI, MSI, LSI and VLSI levels of complexity. Coverage includes decoders, digital comparators, arithmetic and ALU functions, latches, flip flops, counters and registers, RAM and ROM memory, and concludes with the design of a programmable accumulator processor unit. Also described is active, open-collector/drain and 3-state output structures used to support bus architectures.