3. Embedded systems features

3.1 Complex functionalities

Some applications, such as digital watches or the control of household appliances, require very little computing power. At the other end of the spectrum, signal or image processing applications use algorithms that can be highly sophisticated, and require considerable computing resources. Figure 6 , which dates from 2003 but whose orders of magnitude remain valid, shows the computing power required for a wide range of signal processing and image processing applications. As we shall see when examining embedded processors, the most compute-intensive applications involve the use of parallel architectures, with several homogeneous...