Mentor Blogs

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

Mentor recently shared OpenMCAPI, our MCAPI implementation, with the world under an open source license (BSD). We’re proud of it because it was especially designed for portability, and while it’s sophisticated enough to offer advanced features like asynchronous communication, it’s simple enough that it can be easily understood and deployed on low-resource embedded systems. So what … Read More

Multi-OS, MCAPI, Multicore, AMP, Linux

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

Last week, I attended the Embedded Conference Scandinavia in Stockholm. This event has been running for a few years now and I have been to it before. It seems to be gaining momentum. The show floor was well filled and there seemed to be a good flow of visitors. My colleagues, who were manning the booth, commented that they had had some good leads. But I think that it is the technical conference sessions … Read More

Inflexion, MCAPI, User Interface

POSIX signals have a long history and at least a couple unpleasant limitations. For one thing, with some threading implementations (those with fewer processes than threads) you can’t reliably target a specific thread as a signal recipient. However, luckily for me, that is not my problem. My problem is both organizational and technical. Signal masks are for an entire process, and that means that masking … Read More

MCAPI, signals, Android, threads

Multicore continues to be a hot topic. Recent Web seminars, that we have run, were well attended, with lots of searching questions. I have discussed the subject here before, looking at the differences between AMP [Asymmetric Multi-Processing] and SMP [Symmetric Multi-Processing], for example. In various recent discussions with colleagues and customers, I have realized that there is more clarification … Read More

Nucleus, Multi-OS, AMP, Multicore, RTOS, SMP, MCAPI

Some weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry on MCAPI, which seemed to provoke some interest. Last week we ran a Web seminar on this topic, in conjunction with the Multicore Association. This was well attended and seemed well received. You can access the archive recording here. We will be running another session soon, with timing oriented towards European attendees. I have done quite a few Web seminars now … Read More

Multi-OS, RTOS, Multicore, TCP/IP, Nucleus, MCAPI

It is becoming common for embedded designs to incorporate more than one CPU - maybe multiple cores on a chip or multiple chips on a board or any combination of these. Indeed, it has been suggested that it will soon be the norm to build systems that way. The use of multiple cores has spawned various technologies and, of course, much terminology and jargon. When new technical terms and acronyms appear, … Read More

Multicore, Multi-OS, MCAPI, Nucleus, Android, Linux

As usual, I attended the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA last week. I guess it remains the foremost show in the embedded world in North America for sure - probably worldwide. My role was to make some presentations and look after the theater on the Mentor Embedded [our new branding for the Embedded Software Division of Mentor Graphics] booth. I did not have a chance to attend any conference … Read More

Multi-OS, Android, Multicore, Low Power, MCAPI

I recently wrote about a “multi-core” development project that I worked on many years ago, including some details of how we managed communication between the CPUs. Things have moved on a lot since those days and multi-core is now rapidly becoming the norm in embedded designs. It is, therefore, unsurprising that a degree of standardization is being established. Specifically, the Multicore Association … Read More

MCAPI, TCP/IP, Multicore, Nucleus Kernel, Nucleus, Linux

Last week, I wrote about a “multi-core” project that I was working on 30 years ago. To be fair, it was actually “multi-CPU” rather than “multi-core”, but many of the challenges were similar, as was the initial design decision to take the approach of distributing the processing capacity. It is interesting to draw a comparison between the system we were developing all those years ago and modern ideas … Read More

Nucleus, MCAPI, Linux, IPC, Multicore, Nucleus Kernel, Interprocessor Communication, Android