What is an Embedded Software Company and How to Choose one?

There are many reasons to use an external embedded software development company. Embedded software company can give you a competitive edge, minimize your development cycle and help you make your product smarter. If your company is developing an embedded product and you don’t have the skills or the resources to develop embedded software – you may want to outsource the design activities to an external company: An embedded software services company.

Managing an outsourced embedded software company can be an easy task if you have been lucky to select the right one. Otherwise, things can get complex and problems can occur even after you deliver the end-product to the market. The financial stakes, after your product enters the market, can be huge due to product recall and loss of reputation.

As opposed to PC software development, embedded software is all about controlling the CPU and hardware at lower level. An embedded software development company should must the hardware they are working on to be able to utilize it to its outmost. Embedded software company should be writing software to control or use the hardware in the best possible way.

In this paper, we’ve assembled a few guidelines on how to find an embedded design services company that meets your requirements perfectly.

What is an embedded design services company?

An embedded design services company is a company that offers embedded software development services. The company consists of engineers that have experience in designing embedded software and can undergo embedded development services for small or large embedded products.

What are the services an embedded design company offer?

Depending on your project needs, an embedded design company can offer: pre-design, design services and post-design services. The company can support either an entire project or a small block development.

Embedded software company offers concept definition, software coding and test programs. This can over a range of levels from low level programs such board level support and device drivers to high level such user interface development.

Here is a general list of services one can obtain from an embedded design services company:

• Embedded Software feasibility study
• Software Architecture/concept design
• Technology selection
• Board Support Package development
• Driver development
• Software/Firmware development
• design simulation
• Software design verification
• Software debugging
• Software-Hardware integration
• Software support & field upgrades

What type of tools and languages an embedded design company utilizes?

Designing an embedded software requires specific expertise and full control over programming languages and development tools. The following is a list of programming languages and development tools available in the market today.

Examples of Embedded Programming Languages:

• Java ME
• Mruby
• Objective C
• C/C++
• Assembly
• Rust
• Phyton

Example of Embedded Programming Operating Systems:

• Linux
• Android
• iOS
• ThreadX
• Windows
• VXWorks
• FreeRTOS
• QNX
• eCos
• LynxOS

What type of embedded technologies the embedded design house uses?

There are over 20 vendors that develop microcontrollers for embedded systems. Some embedded design companies have selected their “favorite” microcontroller technology and therefore, specialized in this domain while some have done designs in wider range technology types. Here is the list of top microcontroller vendors:

• Intel
• Infineon
• NXP
• ARM
• AVR
• ST
• Microchip
• And many more

Conclusions and next steps

Designing an embedded product requires specific expertise both in embedded development process and in your application area. It’s only through precise execution with the right embedded design services partner you will be able to assure a reliable, bug free solution.

It’s all starts with selecting the right embedded software company partner. Ready to select an embedded service services company? click here.