Digital System Design

Book excerpt: Today, embedded systems are widely deployed in just about every piece of machinery from toasters to spacecrafts, and embedded system designers face many challenges. They are asked to produce increasingly complex systems using the latest technologies, but these technologies are changing faster than ever. They are asked to produce better quality designs with a shorter time-to-market. They are asked to implement increasingly complex functionality but, more importantly, to satisfy numerous other constraints. To achieve these current goals, the designer must be aware of such design constraints and, more importantly, the factors that have a direct effect on them. One of the challenges facing embedded system designers is the selection of the optimum processor for the application in hand: single-purpose, general-purpose, or application specific. Microcontrollers are one member of the family of the application specific processors. Digital System Design concentrates on the use of a microcontroller as the embedded system's processor and how to use it in many embedded system applications. The book covers both the hardware and software aspects needed to design using microcontrollers and is ideal for undergraduate students and engineers that are working in the field of digital system design.