Electronic – Why do embedded systems need to be programmable

So from the previously linked answer, I think the most interesting/beneficial things for me would be the bullet about learning the tools (compiler and linker), and learning different styles of software architecture (going from interrupt based control loops to schedulers and RTOSes)

Porting a small operating system to a new device could help you to understand schedulers and RTOSs. FreeRTOS is popular and well documented. eCos is another.

Writing a bootloader is a good way to get to grips with a linker as you'll want to divide up memory and flash into regions.

Another tip is to pick a completely new architecture or chip and build yourself a development board. Forcing yourself to start right from the beginning and look everything up in the datasheet is a good way to learn.

Explore Protothreads. Try writing the same programs in both a threaded and state machine style. Once you're done with Protothreads, write a real thread scheduler.

You basically have two possibilities:

• Go for ARM
• Go for Intel (x86/amd64)

It depends how you define your embedded system. There are ARM modules available with four cores, each one running at 1GHz+ (e.g. the Toradex Apalis family is a Multicore ARM Cortex-A9 module but others are available as well).

If you have high requirements regarding RAM and processor speed, probably the better option is to select a Core-i7 or something similar (check out the COMExpress families from e.g. Congatec) and build that into a smaller system.

Now, how do you decide on the right operating system:

• Windows Embedded will only run on x86/amd64 architecture; There is no support for ARM processors. This can be considered as a stripped down version of Windows for PCs.
• Windows Embedded Compact is available for ARM as well, consider it being the typical Mobile Device platform which is often optimized for reduced power consumption. Also, you are able to add your own drivers easily. So if you want to dive really deep down, this might be your preferred choice.