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Bite-sized posts on "tiny-code for tiny-chips"
EM•Bytes serves as the voice of The EM Foundation – a 501(c)(3) non-profit which sponsors and promotes novel software technology for resource-constrained embedded systems.
Our "tiny-code for tiny-chips" mantra reflects a deep-seated belief about the current state of embedded software engineering – too much memory bloat, too much runtime overhead, and too many high-level programming APIs for the job at hand.
With so much technical debt taken on by today's legacy embedded software, next-generation MCUs have little choice but to add more memory and more MIPs to mitigate software's ever-expanding size and complexity.
On a personal note
When I began programming embedded systems in the late 1970s, most target processors had less than 32K of memory. But somehow, we managed to overcome this constraint in real-world applications – taking pride in how compact we could craft our code.
Today, of course, even the most rudimentary low-power sensor tag demands at least 10× the memory – for application software that now includes device drivers, a wireless stack, DSP functions, and perhaps an RTOS.
But what if we could shrink this software by an order of magnitude – and enjoy comparable reductions in power consumption and system cost ???
With "tiny-code" of this scale at hand, we can also imagine a new breed of "tiny-chips" featuring novel MCU architectures with 10× gains in performance and efficiency.
The articles which follow touch on a range of topics under our "tiny-code for tiny-chips" umbrella – often highlighting initiatives by the The EM Foundation to drive change in how we think about resource-constrained embedded systems.
We'll keep the articles short – skim them in a minute, digest them in under ten.... And though each post will invariably cover technical material, we'll keep the content high-level – flying at 10,000 feet, but with links to other resources for those wishing to deep-dive on the ground.
Happy coding !!! 
Quantifying energy efficiency with EM•Scope
October 1, 2025 · 
7 min read
Vendor data sheets might specify that an ultra-low-power MCU draws (say) 700 nA @ 3 V when in its "deep-sleep" mode. Very nice – but until we factor in our application workload, we have no way to truly assess the impact of these MCU specs on overall energy efficiency.
The BlueJoule™ benchmark – EM•Scope in action
A basic Bluetooth Low Energy beacon – continually advertising the same packet on multiple channels – serves as the "Hello World" of BLE applications. So let's see what we might learn by using EM•Scope to measure and compare a representative set of BLE HW/SW platforms.