This document provides an overview of embedded systems and trends in three paragraphs:
It defines an embedded system as any electronic device that incorporates a microprocessor to perform dedicated tasks. It discusses the history of embedded systems from early military and calculator applications to today where they are ubiquitous. It lists some common applications of embedded systems like ATMs, phones, vehicles, industrial equipment, and medical devices.
[Slide Objective: Articulate the current and future market trends that will be driving the business of OEM system developers in the new decade] The embedded marketplace is undergoing fundamental change as market trends such as ever-increasing customer demands, new technologies, and the ongoing evolution of the technology industry offer challenges and opportunities to the embedded system developer. 1) Customer Demands are Changing: Customers are increasing asking their devices to do more, cost less, and connect with everything. Customers want richer functionality that include some of the latest desktop and server features to provide richer applications and services. They want lower cost, not only in terms of the device cost they pay but the ongoing support costs to manage and update the device more easily and centrally. Finally they are looking for greater interoperability and connectivity to access and exchange information with their existing and evolving IT infrastructure and other computing systems 2) The Technology Industry continues to evolve The second major embedded industry trend is the influence of the larger ongoing computer industry trends as hardware and bandwidth costs continue to fall at 30-50% per year. In addition, increasing standardization and time-to-market pressures encourage the greater use of commodity off-the-shelf hardware, open communication standards and commercial rather than proprietary embedded operating systems. 3) Because of these customer and industry changes, New Technologies continue to enter the embedded marketplace as their use becomes more popular, possible, and affordable Technologies like: Increasingly TCP/IP centric communication options Richer GDI/GUI for user interactivity Availability of Distributed computing through object-oriented application technologies Methods to integrate with databases, mail servers, and web servers Configurable Internet browsing Remote Device Manageability The combination of these market trends result in escalating demands for more features, delivered more quickly to the marketplace at lower and lower costs. Moreover, this trend will only accelerate further as 32-bit computing and standardized pervasive connectivity become more standard.