There is a tremendous number of hardware products and industrial systems where the processing is performed on small and cheap components (microcontrollers, digital signal processors).
Of course there exist very complex components in the category of microcontrollers, some of them even offer enough resources to run Linux, but if you stick to the $1-$5 range the specs are very limited.
Here are two examples, the first one costs around $3 and the second one is less than $1.
I develop on such platforms and even though there is an interesting challenge in programming these tiny processors and optimizing CPU cycles and memory usage all the time, in the long run it becomes quite strenuous because there is only low-level stuff and I miss the expressiveness and flexibility of more abstract languages.
Of course there exist very complex components in the category of microcontrollers, some of them even offer enough resources to run Linux, but if you stick to the $1-$5 range the specs are very limited.
Here are two examples, the first one costs around $3 and the second one is less than $1.
http://www.ti.com/product/tms320f28027 http://www.atmel.com/devices/attiny85.aspx
I develop on such platforms and even though there is an interesting challenge in programming these tiny processors and optimizing CPU cycles and memory usage all the time, in the long run it becomes quite strenuous because there is only low-level stuff and I miss the expressiveness and flexibility of more abstract languages.