Embedded Software

Interesting semester coming up for me. As some of you may know I am starting (at least partially) my masters in Computer Science. After much thought. I have decided to focus on the field of: Embedded Software Development. Embedded applications are everywhere. When you use your microwave, drive your car, program your tv, program you DVD player and on and on. Almost all household devices have some software embedded into it. That’s how it functions. Of course there has to be someone writing those softwares. I will be that person. About 10 years ago however, a company would hire an Electrical Engineer or a Computer Engineer to do this task. But recently there has been some advancements where Computer Scientists can design the software as if they were writing it for the PC. Then a third party software such as: VeriLog takes the assembly of the software (with the help of some hardware such as EP-ROM writers) and takes care of writing to the device so that the device can function. Of course each devices has to supply an API that can be used to manipulate or get access to information from the actual device. But most devices these days do.