Following are the major design metrics for an embedded system:

1. Power Dissipation: Power dissipation is a major constraint in battery operated systems or systems power using non-conventional sources of energy. Thus to maximize the available power, low power and ultra-low power components must be incorporated in the design.
2. Performance: The performance of an embedded system is measured by its speed of operation. This speed of operation is related to the instruction execution time of system. Different parallel execution techniques can be used to maximize speed when serial execution is not required.
3. Process deadlines: Embedded systems generally have different blocks dedicated for acquiring, processing and releasing the outputs and there is a time deadline associated with such operations known as the process deadlines.

4. Size: The size of an embedded system is measured in terms of the

   (i) Physical space required

   (ii) Memory requirements specified in bytes for storing the data and results and also for running the firmware

   (iii) Number of million logic gates used in the hardware.

5. Engineering cost: The cost of developing, designing, debugging and testing an embedded system is called the engineering cost or the Non-recurring-cost

6. Manufacturing cost: Cost of manufacturing each unit.
7. Prototype development time: It includes the prototype making time and in-house testing time.
8. Time to market: Time in days or months for the product to be released in the market.
9. System and user safety: The system must be absolutely safe for the user. It must also contain redundant blocks to address the safety concerns arising due to system failure.
10. Maintenance: This metric represents the changeability and additions for the system. This includes upgrading the existing hardware and firmware as and when new versions are released. The system should be designed in such a way that maintenance can be done easily.
11. User Interface: This includes the keypads, GUIs and other human interfacing features present in the system