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EMBED THIS PC

PART 1: WHATýS IT ALL ABOUT?
by George Martin

Start ý Narrowing Specs ý Selecting the CPU ý Packaging ý The Software ý Memory ý Your Job ý Sources and PDF

Iýve had several requests to do an article about embedding a ý486. To date, I resisted, making up excuses like it is too complicated, too broad a topic, too difficult, or too anything else I could come up with. Although I still believe all these issues are true, Iýve decided that those issues are exactly why I should tackle this subject.

JUST HYPE?

Unless youýve been hiding under a rock, youýve probably heard the marketing blitz about embedded systems becoming really big. I donýt know if itýs much more than marketing hype at this point, but I believe itýs fast becoming true.

Essentially, a number of factors are coming together that make me believe more and more embedded projects will be designed using a ý486. In the past, the desktop PC was too sophisticated and expensive to even consider embedding. But now, the price has dropped and landfills across the country are filling up with ý286, ý386, and slow ý486 desktop machines.

Writing software for the ý486 CPU involved DOS or Windows environment, forcing your application to be DOS- or Windows-based. Now youýve got DOS, Windows, Windows CE, Unix, and a variety of real-time operating systemsýall with embedded versions. In the past, a ý486 emulator was expensive, and the only way to bring up a new board was using an emulator. Although the emulators are still expensive, there are a host of other practical choices that can be used to develop new hardware.

And last, memory was too expensive for the low-cost embedded world, but memory prices have fallen enough that we can load the board with all that bloated code and still meet the price budget. In this series of articles, I hope to show you some basic design concepts to help you decide if canned (bloated) software is what your project requires, or if you need a lean, mean computing machine, or something in between.

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