What happened is that our cars have evolved to become, essentially, complex, networked, embedded systems – big ones. An average car when I was a kid back in the ’70s had just a small number of electronic components – lights (yes, we all had those, but it seemed like a head or tail light was always burning out), a slick and fancy 8-track “audio system,” and possibly air conditioning — not much else. Electronics in these vehicles accounted for just a sliver of the purchase price of the car, and didn’t cause much of a ruckus … Read More → "Connecting the Dots"

Open-source operating systems (and specifically embedded Linux) have been making big gains in the device software space. Development teams are attracted by the lack of licensing fees and contracts, lower cost of ownership, perceived portability, and broad availability of the underlying software and source code. Unfortunately, some of the mechanisms that create these attractive benefits also carry hidden (and not-so-hidden) penalties. Finding the right release (distribution), finding or creating a test suite that matches that distribution, getting support (since software that comes from nowhere has nobody answering the phones), and tracking the current and appropriate versions for your application … Read More → "The People’s RTOS"

First, there are many “knowns” in the enterprise software space. Developers usually develop on the same hardware (host machine) and software platform (i.e. operating system) that their final product will run on. Usually, it is a well-tested and well- known development environment that hasn’t changed over the multiple products that the developer has contributed to. As a result, the software developer typically focuses on the application rather than the environment. Additionally, in the majority of enterprise applications, there is also no concept of real-time performance, determinism, or interrupts (outside of keyboard, mouse and network).</ … Read More → "The Challenges of an Embedded Software Engineer"

As system designers, we encounter the integration question at a much lower level. Processors, peripherals, memory, interconnect, and storage are all basic components of almost every modern electronic system design. A successful system designer has to balance the forces of form factor, power, price, performance, reliability, security, scalability, and product evolution in order to make the crucial decision of what and how to integrate, and what to leave discrete. While there are myriad options available, there is no reliable formula or roadmap to guide us through this complex engineering tradeoff.

As system designers, the first thing we … Read More → "Intelligent Integration"