A BEGINNING IN EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

As the name suggests the word embedded mean anything that is fixed ,rooted and implanted. Microprocessors and microcontrollers are becoming tiny day by day thanks to the latest trends in chip designing and Moore’s law which is almost become self sustaining. These small smart chips are getting incorporated in almost all standalone systems.
Embedded system means any system in which a micro controller or a microprocessor is hidden and the entire system is standalone.
Embedded systems have to take care of lot of things simultaneously. They have to respond to external events, commands and user instructions. They must also take care of alarm conditions and faulty conditions caused by power failures , faulty components and most of the times by end user intervention.
Software for embedded systems must handle many problems which are unheard of in application software for desktop or mainframe computers.


Some of the examples of embedded systems are:


An automatic washing machine since it requires only modes of operation from the user. It takes care of the rinsing, drying and washing instructions as set by the user.
A phone line modem can also be considered to be an embedded system. Nowadays with system on chips and ASICS ,we have single chip modem chipsets from ?TDK ,Motorola ,Zilog and many more.
A laser printer is also is an embedded system. Most printers have substantial microcontrollers embedded in them to control tasks like procuring data from the communication port normally the parallel port or LPT1/2, for sensing when he operator pushes a button on the control panel of the printer., for sensing paper blockages and reporting to the front end or the troubleshooting printer software/GUI.
But the largest function of the micro controller is to deal with the laser engine, which is the heart of the printer and which puts the ink on the paper at suitable places.
The only thing the laser engine does with the assistance of the micro controller is whether to put a black dot on the paper or not.
It is actually quite dumb it does not understand the images or the font, styles formatting etc. The smart thing in the printer is the microcontroller.