Ganssle J., Gomez M., Ahluwalia S. The Firmware Handbook

Baltimore: Elsevier, 2004. - 384 p.
Welcome to The Firmware Handbook! This book fills a critical gap in the embedded literature.
There’s a crying need for a compendium of ideas and concepts, a handbook, a volume
that lives on engineers’ desks, one they consult for solutions to problems and for insight into
forgotten areas. Though the main topic is firmware, the gritty reality of the embedded world
is that the code and hardware are codependent. Neither exists in isolation; in no other field of
software is there such a deep coupling of the real and the virtual.
Analog designers tout the fun of their profession. Sure, it’s a gas to slew an op amp. But
those poor souls know nothing of the excitement of making things move, lights blink, gas
flow. We embedded developers sequence motors, pump blood, actuate vehicles’ brakes,
control the horizontal and vertical on TV sets and eject CDs. Who can beat the fuzzy line
between firmware and the real world for fun?