By Wayne Wolf for Embedded.com
“Designing and implementing embedded programs is different and more challenging than writing typical workstation or PC programs. Embedded code must not only provide rich functionality, it must also often run at a required rate to meet system deadlines, fit into the allowed amount of memory, and meet power consumption requirements.

Designing code that simultaneously meets multiple design constraints is a considerable challenge, but luckily there are techniques and tools that we can use to help us through the design process. Making sure that the program works is also a challenge, but once again methods and tools come to our aid.”

Wayne Wolf presented in this series of nine articles (published between July 2007 and October 2007), where he concentrated on high-level programming languages, specifically the C language. High-level languages were once shunned as too inefficient for embedded microcontrollers, but better compilers, more compiler-friendly architectures, and faster processors and memory have made highlevel language programs common.

Part 1: Program design and analysis
Part 2: Models of program, assemblers and linkers
Part 3: Basic Compilation Techniques
Part 4: The creation of procedures
Part 5: Register allocation and scheduling
Part 6: Analysis and optimization of execution time
Part 7: Trace-Driven Performance Analysis
Part 8: Analysis and optimization of energy and power
Part 9: Program Validation and Testing