What do we mean by “embedded”? Doug Gaff, an engineering manager at Wind River, pondered that question as he wandered the aisles at last week's Embedded Systems Conference. It was like “taking a walk down memory lane,” says Gaff, and yet “something didn't feel right.”

In this guest column, Gaff gives his take on ESC and considers the future of the industry as a whole. In the days of 8- and 16-bit microprocessors with “virtually no memory, no displays, and lousy tools,” embedded development represented “engineering superiority over the application developer.”

Now, however, with processors having become far more powerful and embedded devices increasingly interconnected, what we traditionally think of as embedded is “just one part of the bigger picture,” Gaff suggests. “It's no longer an island.”

What does this portend for the embedded industry? Read Gaff's guest column here:

 
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