How many system architectures?

Developers often call an embedded system's hardware architecture a platform. The idea is that you select a hardware platform, then write software to fit onto it. Matters are, however, more complicated. The platform provides the computing resources required to run the embedded application, and the decisions about what hardware should go into the platform often depend on what sort of software you want to run. It is predicted that constant pressure on the cost and power consumption of embedded systems will continue to spawn a diversity of uniprocessor and multiprocessor platforms.