The influence of embedded systems is constantly growing. Increasingly powerful
and versatile devices are developed and put on the market at a fast pace. The
number of features is increasing, and so are the constraints on the systems
concerning size, performance, energy dissipation and timing predictability.
Since most systems today use a processor to execute an application program
rather than using dedicated hardware, the requirements can not be fulfilled by
hardware architects alone: Hardware and software have to work together to meet
the tight constraints put on modern devices.

This special issue focuses on the software generation process for modern
embedded systems. This includes all aspects of the compilation process,
starting with suitable modeling and specification techniques and programming
languages for embedded systems. The emphasis lies on code generation
techniques for embedded processors. The exploitation of specialized
instruction set characteristics is as important as the development of new
optimizations for embedded application domains. Cost criteria for the entire
code generation and optimization process include runtime, timing
predictability, energy dissipation, code size and others. Since today's
embedded devices frequently consist of a multi-processor system-on-chip,
contributions about compilation techniques for MPSoC architectures would be
especially welcome.