Embedded Hardware Interfaces

What they are

Embedded hardware interfaces are the wired protocols a microcontroller or system-on-chip uses to talk to the other chips sitting on the same board: a temperature sensor, a display, a memory chip, a motor driver. Each interface defines the physical wiring, the electrical signaling, and the rules for exchanging bits over those wires. Six interfaces cover almost everything you'll encounter: GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, PWM, and the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). A seventh, CAN, shows up specifically when many nodes share one bus, as in a car or an industrial machine.

These are short-distance, board-level connections, typically centimeters of trace or a short cable, not the wireless or networked links that carry data off the board entirely.