I believe we have different definition of embedded system.
There are a lot of them, for me simplest definition is CPU/uC system without MMU.
Those Cisco Ricoh gear have Linux running inside (at least for phone I have it's some 200MHz MIPS)
The 32-bit market was at $6 billion by 2014 per Amtel's report. There's also a huge amount of sales for Windows Embedded and embedded Linux's. That represents a significant chunk of a massive market. So, it's quite worthwhile to call even a 32-bit-targeted, hard-real-time GC useful for "embedded" systems. As he said, it's part of the standard definition used in the embedded sector. The 32-bit side is going up rapidly, too, due to decreasing cost and power usage.
EDIT: The specs on them are also starting to look like the desktops of old. Actually, started to do that quite a while ago.
My definition is the market definition, it doesn't single out to one specific architecture design.
The market goes all the way from something like the PIC10 to something ARM v8 64 bit.
It is all a matter of what a company is targeting as customer market, and how much it is willing to spend.
Just because a given language is not able to target 100% of the market, it doesn't make it invalid to such market.
If that was the case, C wouldn't be a valid language for embedded development as well, given that many CPU/uC aren't able to cope with straigh ANSI C compliant compilers and require either a C dialect or pure Assembly.
