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Emergence of embedded systems
The computers used to control equipment, otherwise known as embedded systems, have been around for about as long as computers themselves. They were first used back in the late 1960s in communications to control electromechanical telephone switches. As the computer industry has moved toward ever smaller systems over the past decade or so, embedded systems have moved along with it, providing more capabilities for these tiny machines. Increasingly, these embedded systems need to be connected to some sort of network, and thus require a networking stack, which increases the complexity level and requires more memory and interfaces, as well as, you guessed it, the services of an operating system. Off-the-shelf operating systems for embedded systems began to appear in the late 1970s, and today several dozen viable options are available. |