Memory Allocation Problems in Embedded Systems

Embedded systems are everywhere in contemporary life and aresupposed to make our lives more comfortable. In industry, embeddedsystems are used to manage and control complex systems (e.g.nuclear power plants, telecommunications and flight control) andthey are also taking an important place in our daily activities(e.g. smartphones, security alarms and traffic lights). In the design of embedded systems, memory allocation and dataassignment are among the main challenges that electronic designershave to face. In fact, they impact heavily on the main cost metrics(power consumption, performance and area) in electronic devices.Thus designers of embedded systems have to pay careful attention inorder to minimize memory requirements, thus improving memorythroughput and limiting the power consumption by the system'smemory. Electronic designers attempt to minimize memoryrequirements with the aim of lowering the overall systemcosts. A state of the art of optimization techniques for memory managementand data assignment is presented in this book.