Customer Reviews

Embedded Software: Know It All (Newnes Know It All)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is like a catalog of Newnes' embedded series. Content of each of the chapters is basically taken from Newnes book. For example,Chapter 2 Device Drivers is taken from the book "Embedded Systems Architecture" and Chapter 7 Techniques for Embedded Media Processing is taken from "Embedded Media Processing". Well, it is not difficult to guess which books they were taken from, as the books are shown on the page on the back of the front page.

Alright, so what is the consequence of different writers writing on different topics without knowing what others were writing? The result is, a lot of inconsistency and yet overlapping between chapters. The wide range of microprocessor examples used in this books includes Rabbit, TI DSP, Freescale. However, many common topics such as code optimization, real time system appear in 2 or more chapters. I quickly ran through the table of content and found MMU in Chapter 3 and 5, Code optimization in Chapter 7,8 and 9.

If you are a fans of Newnes embedded series, or would like to find out what is this like, then maybe this is the book for you.

Topic-wise, I think the book is spot on covering the aspects of embedded that needed to be covered. I do think there is a tradeoff between trying to be general and applicable to the broad market vs. being specific and relevant to a small few. This book strikes a pretty good balance.

Many of the examples pertain to PowerPC so if you are using this architecture for your embedded projects, this would be a reasonable book to get spun up on. If you are using something else, then many of the examples may confuse as much of the information is pulled from PPC reference documentation and could be effectively skipped.

The book did have a challenge in pulling together material from different sources, but I believe does a fine job. I didn't spot any overbearing repeats of information or conflicts on opinions from different chapters.

All in all - job well done. Worth the read.

This book really is a "know it all" book. Each chapter covers an important topic and was written by an expert in that field. I've heard 2 of the authors speak at the 2008 Embedded Systems Conference (Labrosse and Ganssle). When I saw they authored part of this book I decided I had to get it. I was not disappointed.

The first chapter outlines some basic embedded concepts for developers who are new to embedded development. Then each of the following chapters gives detailed coverage on a specific topic such as networking or error handling. Even seasoned embedded developers will find a lot of useful information in this book.

I bought this book because it was the only one on the shelf, despite the rating the other reviewer gave it. Baaaad choice. This book is useless. I'm a new developer to embedded processors (specifically, the 8051), and I got absoutly nothing out of this book. It seems like a bunch of filler material crammed together. Very little substance. This is a book worth $5 if you have never done binary math and don't know what a pointer is. Everything the other reviewer said was correct. How is this publisher selling something like this?

Am I bitter?