Hardware Firmware Interface Design: Best Practices for Improving Embedded Systems... at Dominant Systems Book Store

"I did not have to read too far into this book to realize that the author has extensive experience with not only microcontroller programming but also the management of engineering projects involving hardware and firmware. The format of the book is characterized by numerous boxed text inserts and copious bullet items. However, the content is not fluff; the book is loaded with information, some significant fraction of which can be found only in industry among those with development experience. This author has it." - Dennis L Feucht, www.en-genius.net

Customer Reviews & Comments
This book collects together in one place over 300 practical rules for improving the design of FPGAs, ASICs, ASSPs, and SoCs. The upside of following these rules, as well as the seven guiding principles that underly them, is a reduction in the cost and complexity of the device drivers that use these chips. Too often, in my experience, embedded software engineers must write hardware fixes and workarounds into their device drivers--because the hardware designers didn't follow rules like these. Far too many off-the-shelf chips, such as ASSPs and SoCs, that are developed to be sold in the electronics marketplace are hard to program and poorly documented. And, probably because each has only one customer, most of the FPGA and ASIC designs I've encountered are even harder to use. Some of the 300 rules are just common sense ideas that conscientious hardware designers may already follow without thinking. Others place demands on the documentation more than on the design. But the remainder show a rarer and more clever type of thinking or are just plain good ideas that should always be followed. One of my favorite recommendations from the book is to "provide a chip version register that uniquely identifies the chip revision or FPGA programming" (p. 208). Following this one simple rule, allows firmware or device driver upgrades to work with both new and old versions of the chip's register. That kind of backward compatibility is often a must in today's complex and fast-changing products. I've recommended hardware version numbers for many years, but this is the first book I've seen put this best practice into writing. FPGA designers: If you only decide to follow a few of the 300 rules here, the price of the book will pay off in fewer revisions. Firmware developers: Make a gift of this book to the FPGA designers down the hall and you won't be sorry. I'm confident that this well-written book will serve as the launching pad for important discussions for many engineers working at the hardware-firmware interface. (Full disclosure: My company has hired the author from time to time to work on engineering projects for our clients; as a result, his bio is currently listed on our website. However, I have no financial stake in the success of this book. I just like what he wrote.)

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