New generations of consumer devices with continuous connectivity, rich graphics, and touch screen interfaces are raising expectations in automation market segments serving factories, buildings and homes. Developers face the challenges of minimizing cost and time to market while meeting the requirements of specialized automation markets. This article by Fabio d’ASlessi, CTO of M31 subsidiary Si14, provides a case study that illustrates how modular solutions based on the Intel® Atom™ processor and the Read More → "Touch-Screen Automation, Simplified"

Consumers and small businesses have access to a broad array of IP-based services, from Web services TV programming and video offerings to telephony, energy management and security monitoring. And many more media choices and services and are on the way.

For non-technical end users consumers and small businesses, managing this often complex array of media and communications services can be a challenge. Households can benefit from … Read More → "Intel® Connected Services Gateway Reference Design"

Automakers face the challenge of balancing consumer demand for fuel-efficient cars with customer preferences for value-added electronic features such as in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems.

Electrical components draw power and use fuel, so an important task for car makers is finding ways to add high levels of compute performance for interactive applications without straining the power budget of the vehicle. This application note describes the potential fuel … Read More → "An Energy-Efficient Platform for In-vehicle Infotainment Solutions"

When you want to write your own BIOS on an Intel® architecture platform, you must gather the appropriate documents and determine the order in which the listed items must be performed. Until now there has not been a single document that describes all the … Read More → "Minimal Intel® Architecture Boot Loader: Bare Bones Functionality Required for Booting an Intel® Architecture Platform"

SIMD, or Single Instruction Multiple Data, is an established technique for boosting performance on processors that handle identical workloads. On Intel® processors, multiple independent data buffers can be processed simultaneously using SIMD instructions and registers. The multi-buffer approach can accelerate certain algorithms, such as AES-CBC-Encrypt and 3DES, where SIMD instructions do not exist, and where data dependencies prevent the optimal use of the processor’s execution resources.

Read More → "Processing Multiple Buffers in Parallel to Increase Performance"

One of the major challenges in embedded designs is the ability to exhibit “real-time” determinism. This paper focuses on some of the key design considerations associated with real-time embedded solutions. It introduces a number of the advanced features in Intel® architecture processors and describes real-time considerations and recommendations.

A “Real-time system is one which has a constraint on the time permitted for the system& … Read More → "Designing Real-Time Solutions on Embedded Intel® Architecture Processors"

Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) is a hardware-based solution that provides Out of Band (OOB) remote manageability functions that are independent of the system’s power and operating system (OS) state.

The two components of Intel AMT that allow interaction between the Intel® AMT client and the OS are the Manageability Engine Interface (MEI) device driver and the Local Manageability  … Read More → "Upgrading Intel® AMT 5.0 Linux Drivers to Kernel v2.6.31for Intel Q45 and Intel GM45 based Embedded Platforms"

Embedded systems must be able to detect, recover from and report errors. This is a critical feature during debugging and also for quality control after product manufacturing has commenced. Advanced error handling is especially important for embedded systems that are often manufactured in large unit volumes and must run mission-critical applications non-stop for extended periods of time.

This white paper describes Machine Check Architecture, a … Read More → "Debugging Machine Check Exceptions on Embedded IA Platforms"