ELEC2630 EMBEDDED

SYSTEMS THEORY

Lecture 10: A Web based

Embedded system design &
an overview of Memory
Types
 A Web based Embedded
System design
 This system uses a conventional PC as a
Web server as a user interface
 The key to this system is the use of a
database
 The PC is often part of a distributed
embedded system used for control and
data capture
 The resulting data is stored in the
database
 Any authorised user can have access to
the data, searchable and manipulated as
 User Interface Software
 The code called by the user is in the
form of CGI programs
 The CGI code can be written to
process user requests into queries
for the database and return the data
in the form that the user requires
Data Collection and Control
 The code for this part of the task is
now totally separate and can be
written using the most appropriate
programming techniques
 The embedded system is often
distributed and may use devices as
the Netiom as part of the control and
data collection methods used
 Conclusions
 The integration of web access with
embedded systems takes many
forms and is a growth area at the
moment
 This trend is helped by the increasing
complexity of embedded devices,
such as micro-controllers, made
posible by advances in
semiconductor technologies
Hardware Review: Memory
types
 DRAM
 This type of memory is used when a large amount
of storage is required at low cost.
 The storage element is a capacitor which can be
either charged or not charged.
 The main problem is that the charge leaks away
and has to be replaced before the data is lost.
 This feature is reflected in the full name of
Dynamic Ram.
 The complexity of the circuitry needed to refresh
the data does reduce the cost advantage of the
low number of transistors required per bit.
 Video RAM
 This device is derived from the DRAM
 A DRAM used as a conventional memory
as well as additional hardware to use the
data at the same time for the Video
display
 Essentially the hardware consisted of a
shift register which converted the parallel
data to serial to be clocked out to drive
the video display
 SRAM
 The full name of this device is Static RAM
 The data is held without refreshing all the
time the power is applied
 The cost per bit is much higher than for
DRAM as more transistors are involved in
the circuit for each bit
 The circuit can be designed for low power
operation despite the extra devices per bit
as the power consumption is low except
when switching
 FLASH MEMORY

 This is non volatile storage, i.e. the data is

not lost when the power is removed
 The circuit uses a single transistor as a
storage cell
 Write operation can take up to several
milliseconds, but reads can be as low as
70 to 100 nanoseconds
 This specification makes it a suitable
device for program storage