21 April 2006
Spreading your .NET
How managed code could speed embedded system development. By Richard Parris and Matthew Caffrey.
Short product lifecycles and intense price pressure in markets for mobile devices demand that embedded developers should continually search for faster tools and techniques. However, developing an embedded system typically requires engineers to understand the intricacies of the software platform and processor hardware.
One solution may be to draw on the experience of desktop developers, who benefit from automation of basic functionality and resource management tasks. This allows them to focus on the application, create compelling features and reuse IP across multiple projects.
Embedded developers usually write native code, coupled tightly to the microprocessor and application programming interfaces (APIs) specific to the chosen software platform. This is usually seen as the best way to meet lofty performance demands with scarce system resources.
Desktop developers may take a different approach – building the application using managed code. The APIs are defined as part of a runtime environment that exists as a layer between the application and the operating system. The runtime environment is usually portable across a number of processors and software platforms, thereby allowing the code to be ported just as easily. Hence code can be reused to reduce errors, amortise development costs and generally speed application development.
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
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5716\spreading-your-dot-net.pdf
Websites
http://www.dspdesign.com
Companies
Avnet Abacus
DSP Design Ltd
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