Major Japanese CPU manufacturers, including NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Toshiba, to address the shortcomings of C++ for embedded applications.
The goal of the effort is to preserve the most useful object-oriented features of the C++ language yet minimize code size while maximizing execution efficiency and making compiler construction simpler.
The language has not had a good reception with many expert C++ programmers.
In particular, Bjarne Stroustrup says, "To the best of my knowledge EC++ is dead (2004), and if it isn't it ought to be."[1]
A criticism is that EC++ is intended for use with 32-bit architecture instead of focusing on the big market of 8/16-bit microcontrollers.[2]
In principle an EC++ program can be compiled with any C++ compiler; however, a specific EC++ compiler will be easier to build and might create code that is more efficient than the code from a C++ compiler.
Metrowerks and Tasking Software provide compilers with specific EC++ support for embedded platforms.
Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_C%2B%2B)