not tied to the processor architecture and thus can switch to a better/cheaper cpu easily. The core processor arch yes, but for many (most?) of these small emb

not tied to the processor architecture and thus can switch to a better/cheaper cpu easily. The core processor arch yes, but for many (most?) of these small embedded systems, a large part of the code is basically device drivers used to communicate with GPIO, a plethera of serial buses, and any number of other devices which vary from microcontroller to microcontroller. So unless you offload all that to a RTOS of some kind (which your then limited to devices the RTOS supports) switching devices isn't easy. And for many things, the RTOS overhead will be the largest consumer of CPU+RAM. That is sorta the beauty of the ardunio ecosystem were much of this has been abstracted into common libraries across a number of device families.