feature article
Subscribe Now

Network Hardware & Internet Communities

MontaVista and QNX Open Up Open-Source

Open-source software development is all about community. “Crowd sourcing” of content and talent is all the rage these days, and various social media have made it easier to collaborate with people you’ve never met. Little wonder, then, that software companies have opened their virtual doors to all comers.

A case in point is MontaVista, a long-time supporter of open-source Linux, especially for embedded systems. The company has launched Meld, an online community for embedded-Linux developers, and not necessarily just users if its own products. MontaVista has shown admirable restraint in making Meld a community for all comers, regardless of application, industry, or corporate affiliation. (And no, the URL is not www.meld.com; it’s meld.mvista.com)

Meld is a particularly slick example of so-called Web 2.0 features. It goes beyond the basic message-board format and includes some interesting “friend finder” features that help you decide who’s reliable and who’s not. Meld also makes it easy to locate other members working on projects similar to yours or who are using the same processor, for example, or the same RTOS. It even displays members in a kind of “degrees of separation” graph with you at the center surrounded by programmers with similar interests, tools, or projects. Very slick.

Another example of collaborative information exchange is QNX Software Systems’ peculiarly named Foundry 27. Like Meld, Foundry 27 is an online community of like-minded developers, though this one is a bit more traditionally formatted and focuses on QNX users only. You can find it at www.foundry27.com.

AMCC Does the Work For You

When is a product not a product? When does an evaluation board become more than just a technology demonstrator? And when does your supplier become your competitor?

These are all questions I found myself asking after I met with AMCC at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) to hear all their new announcements. One that struck me in particular wasn’t just a new microprocessor. It was a whole frickin’ computer.

First, some background. AMCC, as you may know, is a chipmaker. They design and sell PowerPC processors as well as an array of interesting networking chips. In fact, AMCC got into the PowerPC processor business when it acquired IBM’s midrange 405- and 440-series embedded PowerPC processors. Since that time, AMCC has expanded and extended the original IBM product line with a slew of new PowerPC processors of its own design. These guys have been busy.

Like any self-respecting microprocessor company, AMCC makes evaluation- and demonstration boards available to its customers. You know the kind: smallish rectangular boards with lots of connectors for logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, and plug-in add-ons, designed for tinkering, evaluating, profiling, debugging and all-around low-cost development. The idea is that you buy one or two of these eval boards, cobble together some code and a few peripherals, and if you like the result you place an order for ten thousand chips. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Here’s where AMCC’s new “evaluation board” is different. Instead of a quick low-cost kludge, this one is a completely thought-out file server, including the sheet metal, power supply, operating system, drivers, fans, and the whole nine yards. It even comes with a sexy front panel. Literally the only thing you need to do is add your own logo and – hey presto! – you’re in the file-server business.

And that’s precisely what AMCC expects its customers to do: slap a logo on the front panel and manufacture the entire product as-is. For the price of the eval board the company gives away all rights to the design including the circuit board schematics and any AMCC-developed software. (Most of the remaining software is open source.) There’s nothing left for you to design – apart from that logo, of course.

Naturally, the file server contains a not insignificant number of AMCC chips. That’s how the company gets paid for its generosity in nearly giving away the design. Should you put this product into production you’ll be buying a fair number of AMCC chips along the way. Everybody wins.

What’s My Name Again?

But this raises some interesting questions about the role of vendor, customer, and OEM supplier. Normally AMCC’s role in product development would end with the PowerPC processors and the networking chips. It’s your job, traditionally, to put them all together in an interesting, useful, and (hopefully) unique arrangement. And it’s perhaps someone else’s job to mass-produce this design and to sell it through a retail or distribution channel. But if AMCC has done all the design work, it essentially cuts out the middleman: the design engineer. Now, a completely spec’ed-out design can go straight to manufacturing. Which enables a lot of low-cost manufacturers with channel access to enter a new and fairly technical market. Interesting…

I suspect this kind of “design help” will catch on in a big way. It speeds time-to-market for both the chipmaker and the mass-producer. By cutting out the interim design step, the end user gets his product that much faster. The only down side is that the products themselves will be undifferentiated. Apart from the logo they’re identical. But that’s okay from AMCC’s point of view. If anyone wants to redesign the box, they’re welcome to do so, but it’ll cost them time and money, making them later to market and more expensive than the “vanilla” competition. Perhaps a good tradeoff, perhaps not. In an age of highly integrated devices and consumer marketing, how much value do the engineers really add?

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
May 25, 2023
Register only once to get access to all Cadence on-demand webinars. Unstructured meshing can be automated for much of the mesh generation process, saving significant engineering time and cost. However, controlling numerical errors resulting from the discrete mesh requires ada...
May 24, 2023
Accelerate vision transformer models and convolutional neural networks for AI vision systems with the ARC NPX6 NPU IP, the best processor for edge AI devices. The post Designing Smarter Edge AI Devices with the Award-Winning Synopsys ARC NPX6 NPU IP appeared first on New Hor...
May 8, 2023
If you are planning on traveling to Turkey in the not-so-distant future, then I have a favor to ask....

featured video

Find Out How The Best Custom Design Tools Just Got Better

Sponsored by Cadence Design Systems

The analog design world we know is evolving. And so is Cadence Virtuoso technology. Learn how the best analog tools just got better to help you keep pace with your challenging design issues. The AI-powered Virtuoso Studio custom design solution provides innovative features, reimagined infrastructure for unrivaled productivity, generative AI for design migration, and new levels of integration that stretch beyond classic design boundaries.

Click here for more information

featured contest

Join the AI Generated Open-Source Silicon Design Challenge

Sponsored by Efabless

Get your AI-generated design manufactured ($9,750 value)! Enter the E-fabless open-source silicon design challenge. Use generative AI to create Verilog from natural language prompts, then implement your design using the Efabless chipIgnite platform - including an SoC template (Caravel) providing rapid chip-level integration, and an open-source RTL-to-GDS digital design flow (OpenLane). The winner gets their design manufactured by eFabless. Hurry, though - deadline is June 2!

Click here to enter!

featured chalk talk

EV Charging: Understanding the Basics
Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and Bel
Have you ever considered what the widespread adoption of electric vehicles will look like? What infrastructure requirements will need to be met? In this episode of Chalk Talk, I chat about all of this and more with Bruce Rose from Bel. We review the basics of EV charging, investigate the charging requirements for both AC and DC chargers, and examine the role that on-board inverters play in electric vehicle charging.
Mar 27, 2023
8,624 views