C++ PROGRAMMING
C++ On Embedded Systems
Date Published: | |
Last Modified: |
Overview
The document “ Technical Performance on C++ Performance” is a good read if you are really interested in the advantages/disadvantages of using C++ on an embedded platform.
The Embedded C++ Homepage is sort of a hub for embedded C++ programming. They define a sub-set of the full C++ language for use on embedded devices such as microcontrollers.
Performance Concerns
One fear about using C++ on an embedded system is a decrease in performance (in terms of memory and processing speed). As with most complex issues, the answer really is, “it depends”.
I believe you can carefully select a subset of the C++ language which provides most of the benefits of OO-based design, but does not incur any performance hits for the target system.
C++ Features That Should Be Used
- Classes (pretty much no overhead)
- Templates (no overhead, can be thought of as a more powerful version of a macro). However, incorrect/careless use of template can cause a huge increase in code size.
- Function overloading
- Typesafe enums (i.e. enum class), typesafe typedefs
- Operator overloading (when done sensibly!)
- References (they are just safer pointers!)
- Namespaces (no overhead)
- Inheritance
- auto
C++ Features That Could Be Used, But Only After Careful Consideration
- Virtual Methods
- RTTI
- STL
- Boost
C++ Standrad Libraries For Embedded Devices
uClibc++ is a C++ standard library designed specifically for microcontrollers. It even has exception support!
Check out The Standard Template Library (STL) For AVR With C++ Streams if you want to get a library for using things like string and iostream with AVR microcontrollers.
Authors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .