Embedded

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The original EMBEDDED topic has been moved to TARGET Embedded (Embedded Systems w/o OS)

An embedded system is a computer system designed to perform one or a few dedicated functions often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer (such as a PC), is designed to be flexible and to meet a wide range of end-user needs. Embedded systems control many devices in common use today. See Wikipedia:Embedded System for further description.

As the general purpose systems (PCs) are becoming smaller and smaller and the embedded systems become more and more powerful (and universally usable devices), the border between embedded systems and general purpose computers will wash out in future. Also a point of discussion would be to which section smart phones shall be assigned.

We can divide embedded systems into several sections:

Embedded systems w/o general purpose operating system (OS).

For this devices, a special target in FPC exists TARGET Embedded

Nintendo platforms

For this devices, special targets exist in FPC. Also there exist specially built crosscompilers for the X86 Windows platform:

• Gameboy Advance (OS_TARGET=gba CPU_TARGET=arm BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-eabi)
• Main processor: ARM7tdmi)
• Sub processor: Z80 arm-gba-fpc-2.4.2.i386-win32.zip
• Nitendo DS (OS_TARGET=nds CPU_TARGET=arm BINUTILSPREFIX=arm-eabi)
• Main processor: ARM946E-S (67 MHz, bei DSi: 133 MHz)
• Sub processor: ARM7TDMI (33 MHz) arm-nds-fpc-2.4.2.i386-win32.zip

Embedded systems with a general purpose operating system

There are several operating systems commonly used in embedded systems

Embedded Linux

Here several flavours exist: From (slightly to radical) slimmed down desktop Linux distributions (like Debian) to even slimmer variants consisting of a Linux kernel and some compact tools packages like BusyBox. Other variants like:

• Open RTLinux aim on enhancements of the real-time behaviour.
• ARM Linux Embedded Systems
• i386 Linux Embedded Systems

Embedded Windows

Here we have XPe (XP-Embedded) which behaves mostly like it's desktop counterpart (i386 only) but offers the following benefits:

• System Builder allows to include/exclude components to slim down system
• Readonly Filesystems supported for more robust operation
• Licensing done in System Builder, no individual licensing at product rollout

The successor is <please add> The other branch are the Windows-Mobile/Windows-CE Variants:

• i386, ARM and MIPS available

Windows Embedded Systems <to be extended>