Embedded Systems Principles

Guidelines for resource-constrained and real-time system development.

When to Invoke

• Developing for microcontrollers or constrained devices
• Real-time requirements (hard or soft)
• Hardware abstraction layer design
• Memory-constrained environments

Resource Constraints

Memory

1. Static allocation preferred — avoid malloc/free in real-time paths.
2. Stack size budgets — calculate max stack depth per task.
3. Memory pools for fixed-size allocations.
4. No heap fragmentation — use fixed-block allocators.