Senior Embedded C++ System Design Showcase

This page highlights end‑to‑end embedded system designs, C++ patterns, and case studies. Whether you’re building production embedded systems, preparing for technical interviews, or expanding your systems programming knowledge, these resources provide practical examples and design patterns.

Table of Contents

Design principles (embedded + C++)

  • Determinism first: bounded latencies, ISR minimization, DMA offload, RTOS priorities.
  • Correctness and safety: volatile MMIO, race‑free lock strategies, W1C semantics, memory barriers.
  • Power/perf co‑design: DVFS, duty cycling, zero‑copy paths, cache‑aware data structures.
  • Robust comms: versioned binary protocols (TLV/CBOR), CRC/seq, backpressure, resumable transfers.
  • Secure by default: secure boot, key storage, least‑privilege, signed OTAs.

Reference stacks

  • Bare‑metal/RTOS pipeline: ISR → ring buffer → worker task → packetizer → transport (BLE/Wi‑Fi/USB) → storage/telemetry.
  • Android device controller: Kotlin UI + foreground service → AIDL/Binder → NDK/JNI parsers → USB/BLE/Wi‑Fi transports.

Case studies (deep dives)

C++ patterns that scale on MCUs/SoCs

  • Zero‑cost abstractions; span/string_view for bounds‑aware views.
  • std::atomic with precise memory orders; lock‑free ring buffers for ISR↔task.
  • RAII for DMA/lock lifetimes; gsl::final_action for cleanup.
  • Fixed‑capacity allocators; intrusive containers for no‑heap regions.
  • Parse/serialize with constexpr tables; small‑buffer optimization where applicable.

Performance & reliability playbook

  • Latency budget: instrument ISR to app; flame‑graph the pipeline; budget per hop.
  • Throughput: chunk sizing vs. MTU, double‑buffering, cache‑line alignment, prefetch.
  • Resilience: watchdog strategy, brownout handling, write‑amortized flash logging.
  • Power: measure in mA over modes; A/B experiments for ML/compression vs. battery.

Security & OTA

  • Chain‑of‑trust boot, KeyMint/TEE (Android) or MCU secure elements.
  • Signed delta OTAs with resume; staged rollouts; rollback guards.

Measurement & test

  • Hardware‑in‑the‑loop record/replay; determinism gates; RF and thermal scenarios.
  • Fuzz binary parsers; property tests for TLV/CBOR; CRC/seq corruption tests.

Design checklist (key considerations)

  • State workloads, latencies, and power targets early; quantify.
  • Show ISR→task design, buffer sizes, and backpressure math.
  • Prove C++ API choices (RAII, atomics, no hidden allocations) and testing strategy.
  • Cover failure drills: sensor faults, thermal, link drops, OTA aborts.

Useful for both production design reviews and technical interviews.