Imagine a robot with an all-around bump sensor. The response to the bump sensor activating depends on the previous state of the robot. If it had been going forward, a bump will send it backwards and ...

Function pointers can be used for a wide variety of applications including the implementation of state machines. Just like any tool, it may not always be appropriate to use function pointers for a ...

This installment starts a new segment of lessons about state machines. The subject conceptually continues the event-driven theme and is one of my favorites [1,2]. Today, you’ll learn what event-driven ...

Designing many-small machines The rules for designing “many-small” state machines are exactly the same as for any state-machine implementation: you must always consider the datapath first because it ...

Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens. They’re ok, but state machines are absolutely on our short list of favorite things. There are probably as many ways to implement a state machine as there ...

Most embedded systems are reactive by nature. They measure certain properties of their environment with sensors and react on changes. For example, they display something, move a motor, or send a ...

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As design size and complexity grows, the design verification effort grows even more. It takes significant amount of time to thoroughly verify complex control logic of a design, which is the key and ...

In the last several years, contemporary SoCs (systems-on-a-chip) have become very complex silicon solutions. They now consist of hundreds of millions of gates, 100 or more discrete Semiconductor ...