If the concepts of “Linux” and “Real Time” are stored in different sections of your brain, you are not alone.  Real-time Linux has always felt to me like a kind of operating system oxymoron – analogous to a hybrid SUV or a concrete canoe.  In my mind, Linux’s heritage was the land of virtuality, dynamic allocation, and squishy priorities – all catch-as-catch-can on processor strokes.  In such a place, the idea of soft real-time is palatable.  You can imagine Linux “trying real hard” to get to your process … Read More → "Doin’ Hard Time"

The latest version of your system is past primary development and ready for regression testing.  You’ve got just a few systems available, and they’re in a lab under the watchful eyes of the hardware development team.  Your software development and QA groups are ready with a bevy of regression tests, but access to the working prototype hardware in the lab is the tricky part.  Complicating the problem, your developers and QA engineers are scattered across three continents in six different time zones.  How do you coordinate use of the hardware for … Read More → "Software Supervision"

FPGA-based system-on-chip platforms are the etch-a-sketches of embedded design.  You can quickly sketch out your embedded computing system, use it, and easily erase and re-construct it in place as design changes are required.  Need a different peripheral?  No problem, just reprogram it.  Need to change a protocol – another simple hardware and software modification.  Want to use a different processor core – or an additional one?  Just drop it in and re-program the chip.  Your same board keeps right on working.

Actel is the alternative FPGA supplier.  On the … Read More → "Actel Activates Platforms"

Which would you prefer for your next embedded project: flexible system elements so that you can easily customize your specific design, or extra performance headroom in case you need more horsepower in the development cycle? Why should embedded engineers put themselves under undue development pressure and settle for one or the other? Soft processing and customizable IP offer the best of both worlds, integrating the concepts of custom design and co-processing performance acceleration into embedded design.

Embedded engineers often struggle with the challenges of improving performance or changing system characteristics after they have already completed the general … Read More → "Soft Processing and Customizable IP Enable Flexible, High Performance Embedded Design"

Convergence is a cool concept.  As embedded systems designers, once we’ve got a versatile computing platform constructed inside a mobile device, it’s exciting to think of all the plus-ones we can add by including plug-in software modules, small incremental pieces of hardware, or plug-and-play peripherals through standardized interfaces.  The conceptual leap from mobile phone to PDA to media player is pretty small once you start down the path.

Unfortunately, slapping on the cool new features isn’t always the tricky part.  Before your customers can lounge out listening to … Read More → "DRM To Go"

The Consumer Electronics show is so large that it’s small.  Amidst the acres of exhibits and over 140,000 attendees, the topics and interests are so diverse that the event becomes a buffet of sorts, serving up a greater variety of technology than you can find anywhere in the world, but specializing in nothing.  Few of the companies exhibiting here consider CES their “big show” of the year.  That status is reserved for the more specialized shows that go into exhaustive detail on any of the sub-subjects sampled at CES.

From an … Read More → "Consumer Electronics Show 2007"