Mentor Blogs

Free Nucleus RTOS source code? Just a few years ago if you would have told me that Mentor Graphics would be offering free-source-code for one of the most successful, popular and distributed RTOS’s in the world, I would not have believed it. Yet, for the last few quarters, Mentor is doing just that! The Nucleus Innovate Program was announced November 2012 and adoption is picking up quickly! To date, … Read More

RTOS, Medical, ARM, STMicro, Nucleus ROTS, NXP, TI, Mentor Embedded, Nucleus

Renesas made a rather significant announcement this week, launching the newest system-on-chip (SoC) in its R-Car series. It refers to the device – the R-Car H2 – as “a complete solution for next-generation high-end multimedia and navigation” with “high performance and state-of-the-art 3D graphics capabilities.” The performance comes in part from ARM’s big.LITTLE processing technology, which in … Read More

Renesas, QNX Software Systems, Wind River, Blu-Ray, Elektrobit, ARM, Mentor Graphics, Microsoft, Imagination Technologies, Infotainment

I often tell people that my job is that of a “professional enthusiast”. I get enthusiastic about products/technologies, then infect other people with that enthusiasm. Well, that is the idea anyway. I enjoy doing this most of all when I get to stand up in front of an audience, as a direct connection with real live human beings is the best way to communicate. However, there are times when … Read More

Cortex-A8, ARM, Sourcery Analyzer, Linux, lttng

Ready for 100 billion “things” connected by the Internet? The IEEE Standards Association (SA) Corporate Advisory Group (CAG) has been working to bring industry input into the standards development organization on the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) trend that will connect billions of devices with each other. As you can imagine, the impact this will have to the service structure down to the development … Read More

ARM TechCon, ARM, oneM2M, Internet of Things, IoT

This week, ARM TechCon 2012 is taking place in Santa Clara, CA. This conference seems to grow bigger every year, reflecting the significance of ARM devices in the embedded world. It is a 3 day event, with days 2 & 3 [Weds/Thurs] devoted to software and systems design. Sadly, I am not attending the event this year, but a number of my colleagues from Mentor Embedded will be there … Glenn Perry, … Read More

ARM TechCon, ARM

I am on vacation and, all being well, by the time this posting goes live, I will be sunning myself on a Greek island. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog about the use of floating point. My colleague Brooks Moses [who did a guest blog post a while back] made a comment on that posting, pointing out that I had over-simplified my example. I am always happy to get such feedback. It transpired that Brooks … Read More

M4, Zynq, Cortex, e600, ARM, FPGA, Freescale, floating point

Live & In-Person at DAC 2012! Verification Academy, the brain child of Dr. Harry Foster, Chief Verification Scientist at Mentor Graphics, was live from the Design Automation Conference tradeshow floor this year.  Harry is pictured to the right giving an update on his popular verification survey from the DAC tradeshow floor. The Verification Academy, predominantly a web-based resource is a popular … Read More

Verification Academy, UVM Express, Tech Design Forum, ACE, AMS, Thales, UPF, UVM, ABV, Coverage Closure, iTBA, Low Power, DAC, OVM, ARM, Assertion-Based Verification, Formal, Doulos, Verification Trends

I am not really sure that I should be promoting this, but here goes … When I was at ESC the other week, I made the mistake of not hiding or looking frantically busy at some point. The result was that I got interviewed by some guys from ARM about the Stella robot that we were showing and the Nucleus RTOS that powers her. It has now been posted on YouTube. I do not think that this one is going … Read More

Nucleus, ARM

Instant Replay Offers Multiple Views at Any Speed If you’ve watched any professional sporting event on television lately, you’ve seen the pressure put on referees and umpires.  They have to make split-second decisions in real-time, having viewed ultra-high-speed action just a single time.  But watching at home on television, we get the luxury of viewing multiple replays of events in question … Read More

Verification, testbench, SoC Level Verification, Cortex, ARM, Software as a Testbench, Functional Verification, SoC

The increasing complexity of cars has taught automakers the value of cooperating with competitors on technology that customers won’t see and don’t care about but would be prohibitively expensive for a single automaker to develop in-house. Automakers and suppliers formed the GENIVI Alliance, for example, to create an open source (Linux-based) development platform for in-vehicle infotainment, facilitating … Read More

Jaguar Land Rover, intel, Genivi Alliance, Visteon, Microltron, MontaVista Software, QNX, Linux, Android, PSA Peugeot Citroën, in-vehicle infotainment, Magneti Marelli, Mentor Graphics, XS Embedded, Renault, Delphi, Microsoft, ARM

Although readers in the US may think that it is a holiday today – and I hope you have a good one – it is just another regular Monday in Europe. Actually, as the Americans are celebrating getting rid of the Brits, maybe we should join in. I am traveling today to an ARM Development Conference in Stuttgart, Germany, which I am sure will be an interesting event. I actually find it curious that … Read More

ARM, MCAPI

Last week I attended the ARM Technical Conference in Santa Clara, California. I am not sure how many years this event has been running, but it seems to be going from strength to strength. There was a change to the management company this year, but the event format was basically the same: a 3 day multiple-stream technical conference, with a selection of keynotes and an associated exhibition area. Obviously, … Read More

Low Power, User Interface, MCAPI, ARM, Multicore, Android

ARM Ltd recently unveiled the virtualization capabilities in ARMv7-A, and they are impressive. Taking a step back though, here’s what impresses me the most: these guys jumped in with both feet. Consider for a moment the very measured approach Intel took with their virtualization extensions to the x86 architecture. They started by adding privilege modes beyond the traditional “ring” model. A later implementation … Read More

Virtualization, ARM

It’s nice to see that some groups can work together for the common good. I’m thinking of the companies participating in the GENIVI Alliance. BMW, Delphi, General Motors, Intel, Magneti Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Visteon, and Wind River formed the Alliance a year ago to create an open source in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) reference platform. The initial version of the platform was released just nine … Read More

Magneti Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Delphi, ARM, Visteon, Graham Smethurst, Will Tu, in-vehicle infotainment, General Motors, Wind River, Genivi Alliance

They say one of the first steps to fixing a problem is to acknowledge that you have one. Hi, I’m Russ, and I have a porting problem. If you work on software in the embedded world, you probably have a porting problem, too. Your code may be an embedded application, drivers, or diagnostics, but at some point the code probably started out on a desktop machine of some sort. When you moved it to run on … Read More

Debug, ARM