Designing Embedded Systems with PIC Microcontrollers

CHAPTER 4 Starting to program – an introduction to Assembler

Embedded system design is made up of two main aspects, the hardware and the software. In the early days of microprocessors, systems were built up laboriously using a large number of integrated circuits (ICs). Memory was very limited, so only small programs could be written. Slowly the available ICs became more and more sophisticated, and the designer had to do less to get a working hardware system. Meanwhile memory was growing, so longer programs could be written. Now we are in a situation where memory is plentiful and cheap and the hardware is sophisticated and readily available. Complex hardware systems can be built up with comparative ease, and in many projects software development ...