Small, SoC-based systems are everywhere these days, from smartphones, video game consoles, and smart television sets, to infotainment systems in cars and airplanes. Consumer devices relying on such systems are extremely common.

In addition to consumer devices, they're also found as part of industrial and building-level controller systems, where they monitor equipment, respond to input, and execute scheduled tasks for whole networks of sensors and actuators. Compared to MCUs, SoCs are not as resource-limited, usually running a full operating system (OS) such as a Linux-derived OS, VxWorks, or QNX.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• How to develop drivers for OS-based embedded systems
• Ways to integrate peripherals
• How to handle and implement real-time performance requirements
• Recognizing and dealing with resource limitations