Review of Embedded System Design on a Shoestring: Achieving High Performance with a Limited Budget (Embedded Technology) (Paperback)

This is an excellent book.I bought it sight-unseen and have been very pleased.The book takes you step-by-step through bringup of an inexpensive ARM7 evaluation board, first using assembly and then using C language with the Newlib embedded C library.The freely available GNU tool chain is used, so you can get up and running without investing in big-ticket commercial development tools.

The book is based on the Atmel EB40 evaluation board.The pricing sweet spot no longer favors this board, so I bought the EB40A instead.I had to figure out differences in the memory map, PIO addresses for the LEDs, and USART clock enable, but this was straightforward after Google searches for the EB40A.

I highly recommend this book.The technical content is accurate, and it is well-written.It appears to be written by an embedded developer, for embedded developers.Other embedded books I have read recently seem organized around marketing objectives, and are over generalized.Those books are interesting but not very useful in the practical sense.

Edwards' book is useful in the practical sense.I hope he continues to write.I'm ready with my credit card when his next book is published.

Product Description
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. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all the code used in the design examples as well as useful open-source tools for embedded design.

·A wealth of practical tips, tricks and techniques

·Design better, faster and more cost-effectively

·Accompanying CD-ROM includes useful open-source tools for embedded design

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