A unique feature of this open access textbook is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental knowledge in embedded systems, with applications in cyber-physical systems and the Internet of things. It starts with an introduction to the field and a survey of specification models and languages for embedded and cyber-physical systems. It provides a brief overview of hardware devices used for such systems and presents the essentials of system software for embedded systems, including real-time operating systems. The author also discusses evaluation and validation techniques for embedded systems and provides an overview of techniques for mapping applications to execution platforms, including multi-core platforms. Embedded systems have to operate under tight constraints and, hence, the book also contains a selected set of optimization techniques, including software optimization techniques. The book closes with a brief survey on testing. This fourth edition has been updated andrevised to reflect new trends and technologies, such as the importance of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the Internet of things (IoT), the evolution of single-core processors to multi-core processors, and the increased importance of energy efficiency and thermal issues.
Dr. Peter Marwedel studied physics at the University of Kiel, Germany. He received his PhD in that subject in 1974. As a post-doc, he published some of the first papers on high-level synthesis and retargetable compilation in the context of the MIMOLA hardware description language. In 1987, his habilitation thesis in computer science (a thesis required for becoming a professor) was accepted. He held a chair for computer engineering and embedded systems at the computer science department of TU Dortmund from 1989 until 2014. He is also chairing ICD, a local spin-off of TU Dortmund. His research interests include design automation for embedded systems, in particular the generation of efficient embedded software. Focus is on energy efficiency and timing predictability. Since 2001, Dr. Marwedel published papers on energy-efficient software and compiler-supported use of scratchpad memories. He is the author of one of the few textbooks on embedded systems. Since 2011, he is the vice-chair of the collaborative research center SFB 876, aiming at resource-efficient analysis of large data sets. Dr. Marwedel is an IEEE Fellow.
