Embedded Systems Design: An Introduction to Processes, Tools, and Techniques
An easy-to-understand guidebook for those embarking upon an embedded processor development project.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Embedded Systems Design: An Introduction to Processes, Tools, and Techniques
Chapter 10: The Future
The previous chapters have focused on tools and techniques that you need to do your job today. This chapter looks beyond the job as it is today to the future. First, I want to describe a new technology reconfigurable hardware that has the potential to completely redefine the process of creating an embedded system.
The closing half of this chapter is devoted not so much to what might come, as to what I heartily wish would come.
Reconfigurable Hardware
The ultimate solution to the partitioning problem might be a new technology known as reconfigurable hardware. Reconfigurable hardware might be the future of computing systems in general, whether they are desktop PCs or embedded systems. Reconfigurable hardware is circuitry that can be changed dynamically so that its very structure changes at run time.
Imagine, for example, a microcontroller that consists of a standard microprocessor core, a big block of this reconfigurable hardware, and nothing else. Unlike current SoC solutions, this imaginary part wouldn t include any dedicated peripheral devices, such as timers, parallel ports, serial ports, Ethernet ports, and so on. Instead, when the application calls for a parallel port, part of the reconfigurable logic would be configured to be a parallel port. If a serial port is needed, the same thing happens. If the design requires high-speed data steering logic, as you might find in a telecommunications application, the hardware block is reconfigured to be a steering block.
What is this magic hardware? The basis of this brave...
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