An "embedded system" is a special-purpose computer system, which is completely encapsulated by the device it controls. An embedded system has specific requirements and performs pre-defined tasks, unlike a general-purpose personal computer.
Characteristics

Two major areas of differences are cost and power consumption. Since many embedded systems are produced in the tens of thousands to millions of units range,reducing cost is a major concern. Embedded systems often use a (relatively) slow processor and small memory size to minimize costs. The slowness is not just clock's speed. The wholearchitecture of the computer is often intentionally simplified to lower costs. For example,embedded systems often use peripheralscontrolled by synchronous serial interfaces, which are ten to hundreds of times slower than comparable peripherals used in PCs. Programs on anembedded system often must run with real-time constraints with limited hardware resources:often there is no disk drive, operating system, keyboard or screen. A flash drive may replace rotating media, and a small keypad and LCD screen may be used instead of a PC's keyboard and screen. Firmwareis the name for software that is embedded in hardware devices, e.g. in one or more ROM Flash memory IC chips. Embedded systems are routinely expected to maintain 100% reliability while running continuously for long periods of time, sometimes measured in years.
Firmware is usually developed and tested to much stricter requirements than is general purposesoftware (which can usually be easily restarted if a problem occurs). In addition, because the embedded system may be outside the reach of humans (down an oil well borehole, launched intoouter space, etc.), embedded firmware must usually be able to self-restart even if some sort of catastrophic data corruption has taken place. This last feature often requires external hardware assistance such as a watchdog timer that can automatically restart the system in the event of a software failure.

Platform

There are many different CPU architectures used in embedded designs. This in contrast to the desktop computer market, which as of this writing (2003) is limited to just a few competing architectures, mainly the Intel/AMD x86, and the Apple/Motorola/IBM PowerPC, used in the Apple Macintosh. One common configuration for embedded systems is the system on a chip, an application-specific integrated circuit, for which the CPU was purchased as intellectual property to add to the IC's design.