Bringing Segmented Stacks to Embedded Systems
Zhiyao Ma, Lin Zhong · 2023
Microcontrollers are the heart of embedded systems. Due to cost and power constraints, they do not have memory management units (MMUs) or even memory protection units (MPUs). As a result, embedded software faces two related challenges both concerned with the stack. First, in a multi-tasking environment, physical memory used by the stack is usually statically allocated per task. Second, a stack overflow is difficult to detect for lower-end microcontrollers without an MPU.