Taking a systems-level approach, this book describes the three major trends in current embedded system design. It begins with an introduction to the overall state of the field before examining optimization in terms of scheduling algorithms in multi-core embedded systems, safeguards against inaccurate information, and the challenges of heterogeneous optimization. It describes synthesis-level scheduling algorithms for phase change memory and scratch pad memory as well as thermal-aware multiprocessor synthesis technology. The book concludes with a look at networking, focusing on scheduling in a wireless sensor network and cloud computing.