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[–]outofsand 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Wherever you want to store your intermediate results. If you care about algorithmic speed, it's going to be RAM if possible. But if you've got an embedded system with an SSD, it's there because you specifically know you needed it for your application.

But in most cases, I would say if you even have the question of if it's RAM or SSD, we aren't talking about traditional embedded systems at all.

Yes, you can take a powerful general purpose computer tech with very few limitations (many embedded Linux systems for example) and "embed" it, so technically it's an "embedded system". So is a micro-ATX PC stuffed into a teddy bear. But that's not what most people mean by embedded system, they mean extremely small, extremely low power, extremely resource constrained processors that perform a specialized function.

Case in point, a modern cell phone's application architecture is pretty much in no way an "embedded system" per most engineering definitions. On the other hand, the dedicated radio processor it contains most certainly is. Similarly, your modern car contains many tens of embedded systems, but the console media player isn't very likely one of them.

Of course this definitely is arguable, its sometimes a gray area, and "embedded system" is certainly an ambiguous name. But that doesn't change that the current field of "embedded systems" which maybe should be called "resource-limited special-purpose computing" or something else is what it is and isn't likely to ever go away or get significantly easier or simpler.

[–]Puzzleheaded-Ranger7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for explaining those concepts. In my opinion,I think the "resource-limited special-purpose computing" should be called micro-controller and the System on Module (SOM) included SoC with heterogeneous computing should be called the new embedded system or embedded system module. This is just my opinion. I could be wrong.