High speed spindle machines have been widely applied to versatile areas of manufacturing, automotive industry, food industry aviation, commercial and medical technology, such as machine tools, fuel cell, turbo generator, mixers, spin testers, and food processor. For precise control and energy saving of spindle motor, the design and implementation of an efficient electric spindle motor drive becomes an important issue. This paper presents two different switching techniques for inverter design. One is 120 degrees conduction which each transistor turns on for a period of 120 degrees in six switching transistors inverter, and the other is 180 degrees conduction which turns on 180 degrees for a complete cycle. A comparison between two different switching techniques shows the advantages of 180 degrees conduction switching for an inverter design because the utilization voltage of 180 degrees conduction is 115% higher than that of the 120 degrees conduction mode. The complete system design of electric motor drive based on an embedded system for a spindle motor including hardware design and software programming is described and realized in this paper. Finally, a prototype of spindle motor drive using ARM microcontroller is implemented and demonstrated. The performances of both switching techniques are also discussed.