- Unit cost: The monetary cost of manufacturing each copy of the
system, excluding NRE cost. - NRE cost: NRE cost (Non-Recurring Engineering cost): The
monetary cost of designing the system. Once the system is
designed, any number of units can be manufactured without
incurring any additional design cost (hence the term “non
recurring”). - Size: the physical space required by the system, often measured in
bytes for software, and gates or transistors for hardware. - Performance: The execution time or throughput of the system.
- Time-to-market: The amount of time required to design and
manufacture the system to market. - Time-to-prototype: The amount of time required to build a
working version of the system. - Type and amount of hardware: Hardware based on SOC or VLSI
design has very high NRE cost. Design challenge is to select most
appropriate type and amount of hardware. - Power dissipation: Power is energy dissipated per second. An
Embedded system may need to be run continuously, without being
switched off. It’s a design challenge. - Energy Consumption: Challenge is to optimize the energy
consumption by appropriate hardware and software design. - Flexibility: Flexibility in design at little cost overhead is a
challenge. A product needs to process flexible features. - Ability to upgrade: Ability to upgrade the design while keeping the
cost minimum and without any significant engineering cost is a
challenge. - Reliability: Designing a reliable product need appropriate design,
thorough testing, verification and validation.
