Hardware/Firmware Interface Design: Best Practices for Improving Embedded Systems Development

by Gary Stringham MSEE

Overview

Why care about hardware/firmware interaction? These interfaces are critical, a solid hardware design married with adaptive firmware can access all the capabilities of an application and overcome limitations caused by poor communication. For the first time, a book has come along that will help hardware engineers and firmware engineers work together to mitigate or eliminate problems that occur when hardware and firmware are not optimally compatible. Solving these issues will save time and money, getting products to market sooner to create more revenue.The principles and best practices presented in this book will prove to be a valuable resource for both hardware and firmware engineers. Topics include register layout, interrupts, timing and performance, aborts, and errors. Real world cases studies will help to solidify the principles and best practices with an aim towards cleaner designs, shorter schedules, and better implementation!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781856176057
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	11/17/2009
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Gary Stringham is the founder and president of Gary Stringham & Associates, LLC. He has 30+ years of experience in the embedded systems industry, assisting clients in their product development and engineering training. He has extensive expertise in diagnosing and resolving a broad range of engineering problems, including: helping litigation clients understand technical aspects of case; working on the design, implementation, and testing of solutions involving software, hardware, and firmware.

Gary previously worked for Hewlett-Packard Company, where he developed and maintained several device drivers controlling a variety of blocks on various ASICs and SoCs for HP LaserJet printers. This involved diagnosing chip problems when they occurred and designing and developing firmware workarounds.

Gary helped develop various tools used for the development, testing, and manufacturing of HP-UX workstation and LaserJet printer products. For a printer emulator tool, he developed the board design, the FPGA code, the firmware running on the tool, and the software running on the host computer. In one instance, the emulator reduced a 40-hour manual test to a 35-minute automated test. For a manufacturing test tool, he architected the tool, led a team of 10 engineers to develop it, and deployed it at five manufacturing sites world-wide.

Gary is a Senior Member of IEEE. He holds a BSEE from Brigham Young University and an MSEE from Utah State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - IntroductionChapter 2 - Principles Chapter 3 - Collaboration Chapter 4 - Planning Chapter 5 - Documentation Chapter 6 - SuperblockChapter 7 - Design Chapter 8 - Registers Chapter 9 - Interrupts Chapter 10 - Aborts, etc Chapter 11 - Hooks Chapter 12 - Conclusion

Appendix A: Best Practices Appendix B: Bicycle Controller Specification Appendix C: Using this Book in a University (only available online at Appendix D: Glossary Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Hardware and firmware are at the core of electronic products; this book shows engineers how to optimize performance through best practices!

Editorial Reviews

"I did not have to read too far into this book to realize that the author has extensive experience with not only microcontroller programming but also the management of engineering projects involving hardware and firmware. The format of the book is characterized by numerous boxed text inserts and copious bullet items. However, the content is not fluff; the book is loaded with information, some significant fraction of which can be found only in industry among those with development experience. This author has it." —Dennis L Feucht, www.en-genius.net"The book is loaded with information, some significant fraction of which can be found only among those with development experience. This author has it…. This is a good book for anyone who is involved in hardware-firmware development and who knows just enough to want to better understand how to organize and design it all." —EN-Genius Network

From the Publisher