Any electronic system that uses a computer chip, but that is not
a general-purpose workstation, desktop or laptop computer. Such
systems use microcontrollers (MCUs) or microprocessors (MPUs),
or they may use custom-designed chips. Deployed by the billions
each year in myriad applications, the embedded systems market
uses the lion's share of all the electronic components in the
world. Embedded systems are employed in automobiles, planes,
trains, space vehicles, machine tools, cameras, consumer
electronics, office appliances, network appliances, video games,
cellphones, PDAs, GPS navigation as well as robots and toys.
Low-cost consumer products can use microcontroller chips that
cost less than a dollar. See microprocessor and microcontroller.
All Kinds of Operating Systems There are embedded versions of
Linux, Windows and Mac, as well as other commercial and
proprietary operating systems specialized for embedded systems.
Embedded systems typically have limited storage, and an embedded
OS is often designed to wo