Customer Reviews

Embedded Controller Hardware Design (Embedded Technology Series)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was one of the best technical books I have read in years. Embedded Controller Hardware Design provides an excellent introduction to the world of embedded controller design. The author has a writing style that is very readable and he uses sufficient examples to illustrate to the reader how to apply what they have just read .

The book primarily deals with the hardware design aspect of controller design, and focuses on the 8051 microcontroller and its variants. Most of the book is spent developing a systematic method of making sure a design will work reliably, even under the unfavorable conditions of a "worst-case" scenario. The book would probably be most useful to electrical engineers, electronics technicians, and serious hobbyist who are just getting started in embedded systems and need some good background material. It could also be useful to programmers who are migrating from the desktop/PC environment to the embedded controller environment and want some information on the structure of embedded hardware.

I'm not sure about the glowing reviews here, but I fail to see how this book can be much help to current embedded designers? While the copyright is 2004, most of the book reads as if it was written in 1994 or even earlier. The book talks a lot about discrete logic, something that's rarely (or barely) used in modern embedded designs. Likewise, the author largely assumes external memory, which is also increasingly rare.

Most people, today, use SPI, I2C and/or CAN serial interfaces within (and even between) embedded devices and peripherals. The book doesn't provide useful coverage of any of these (or even mention some of them). It's as if the author's last real world embedded development work was with the 8051 a few decades ago? It's the only processor he goes into any detail on and not even the current System on a Chip versions.

The book does contain a useful primer to basic electronics and microcontroller theory. But like the rest of the book, much of it is out of date relatively to current embedded design and the same material is covered much better in other books.

The only reason to POSSIBLY buy this book, in my opinion, is the chapter on worst case timing and loading analysis. But even that section is showing its age. Signal levels, PC board design, bus/signal termination, impedance matching techniques, etc. are largely done differently today than what the author suggests. For example, do you know anyone using TTL discrete logic in their current embedded designs? Apparently both Ken Arnold and Newnes/Elsivier think someone does? You can have my copy back Amazon.

This is the best book that I came across treating embedded systems. Most other embedded systems books treat the subject from the point of view of one microcontroller. And they focus a lot on assembly programming. You won't find that in this book. There are only a few pages discussing the 8051. The focus of this book is on the hardware design of microcontrollers and how to interface to them.

Most of others microcontroller or microprocessor books I've read only touch a little on the hardware system design, more often just using ideal models. For instance, most books explain how to construct address decoder using 74138, and thats it. That is sufficient if you are only doing computer simulation. However, when you want to design the real thing, fresh engineers would probably wonder, 74LS138, 74HC138 or 74ACT138 to be used? What are the uses of capacitance value, voltage range,timing diagram etc on datasheet? You will find the answers in this book.

The author use detailed and real example in explaning timing, loading, voltage range, logic families etc. This is the book for fresh graduate who doesnt know where to start, and also for engineers who want to build a realiable circuit.

Great book for beginners and for experts. Really easy/enjoyable to read.

I think the greatest thing about this book is that it describes quite well how one should interpret eletrical specs of devices. The examples are quite practical and use real spec numbers. A must.