Mentor Blogs

I always find it satisfying to see simple solutions to apparently complex problems and the world of embedded software certainly lends itself to some creativity. My concept of “simple” is quite broad, but essentially encompasses anything that is easy to understand [for me] and ideally avoids reinvention of any wheels. A while ago, I wrote about incorporating a Web server [HTTP server actually] … Read More

TCP/IP, Medical, Nucleus, RTOS, SMTP, POP3

In February, I had blogged about the emergence of the smart energy arena, made up of an ecosystem stretching from the utility to your home including connected devices such as data concentrators, smart meters, home gateways, smart appliances etc. A common standard that outlines the requirements regarding connectivity and intelligent communication between these devices is the Smart Energy Profile (SEP) … Read More

RTOS, smart energy, Nucleus SEP, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, smart grid, smart meter

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

In the high-tech market, the IoT is driving connectivity requirements in devices across many segments. Considering the number of embedded medical devices hospital, you can quickly imagine areas where Wi-Fi connectivity can be used to connect devices, patients, administrators and doctors. For example, Wi-Fi can be applicable in the doctor’s office, in the operating room, at the nurse’s station, in the … Read More

Freescale, Medical, Wi-Fi, Nucleus, RTOS

The concept of machine-to-machine communication (M2M) is the foundation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Of the few core technologies that help facilitate this, zero configuration networking (zeroconf) is key. Zero configuration networking is what allows your personal, portable wireless devices to talk to other similar devices – without any additional setup required from the user. In the pre-zeroconf … Read More

M2M, mDNS, smart energy, zeroconf, Networking, RTOS

Nucleus, our flagship RTOS offering has been around for several years now. In this time, it has been designed into more than 3 billion embedded devices in various applications such as mobile, medical, consumer electronics, industrial and more! The phrase “been there done that” could not be more appropriate to Nucleus. Regardless, when it came time to design yet another cool demo, our engineers were … Read More

industrial, Nucleus, DESIGN West, RTOS, Zigbee

In the early days of embedded systems, software engineers typically had some understanding of hardware design. Indeed, in many cases, it was the hardware designer who implemented the software. Over the years, as the amount of software development has increased, engineers have become less and less “hardware aware”. I find this transition interesting from the viewpoint of an embedded software … Read More

Verilog, RTOS, VHDL, FPGA, MicroBlaze, NIOS, Nucleus

Here at Mentor Graphics we are always pleased to get customer feedback on the use of our technology for embedded software development. One such customer is Imagination Technologies whose “Pure” product division has used our embedded user interface (UI) technology and services to create and power the UI in their outstanding “Pure Avalon 300R Connect Freeview+ HD Digital TV Recorder”. … Read More

HMI, Inflexion, RTOS, UI, Nucleus, Nucleus ReadyStart

This week I am on my annual pilgrimage to Nuremberg, Germany to attend Embedded World. This is the first major conference of the year that covers embedded software and is, I am sure, now the largest event serving this community anywhere in the world. I have written about past visits and this year’s trip will be quite similar, except that I will be rather busy … Most years I have had one … Read More

Embedded World, Low Power, Power Management, RTOS

The Mentor Embedded team will be at Embedded World in Nuremburg Germany this week. In addition to a number of demos at the Expo (Hall 5, Booth 324) we are presenting a number of sessions as well. On Tuesday Colin Walls will give two presentations: His first session is titled “Power Management in Embedded Systems”. This is part of Session 4: System Level Design and will be from 3:15 pm … Read More

Low Power, RTOS, Embedded World

NXP has joined the Nucleus Innovate Program with its line of LPC ARM Cortex M4 family of microcontroller devices. The first Nucleus BSP available for NXP will be on the Hitex LPC4350 evaluation board. Just to mention a few of the onboard goodies, the LPC4350 has speeds up to 204MHz, USB, LCD, Ethernet with 1MB FLASH and 264kb SRAM, making the LPC3450 a very capable development platform. Moreover, the … Read More

NXP, Nucleus, RTOS, LPC1800, LPC4000, free software, MCU, multi-core, LPC4300, LPC4350

Recently I posted about the challenges of using a write only port. Then I followed that up with another posting that illustrated the use of C++ to encapsulate the necessary coding nastiness. Hopefully, these two postings conveyed the general ideas – defining the problem and outlining a solution. However, one aspect of the solution was not addressed: the proposed code was not reentrant … Reentrancy … Read More

device drivers, drivers, RTOS

I have always characterized the difference between desktop systems and embedded along the lines of “desktops are all the same; embedded systems are all different.” Although, if I think about platform based designs, this is less universal, but the distinction still mostly holds true. Commonly, I would cite this difference when considering the needs of embedded software engineers with respect … Read More

RTOS, device tree, BSP, ReadyStart, Linux, Nucleus

RTOS’s have been around for a long time in the embedded industry.   And with the introduction of the TI RTOS, Freescale’s MQX, FreeRTOS and several others, I hear all the time that “RTOS’s have become a commodity.”  And to some extent, I agree.   While every RTOS has its pros and cons with various features and benefits, selecting the right one for “your” application requirements can be a little tricky.  … Read More

OSS, RTOS, Freescale, Android, Mentor Embedded, Nucleus, Linux, Medical

I like simple things. In particular, I like clean and simple ways to solve a problem. For example, user interaction with an embedded system might be something very slick – touch screen LCDs seem to be fitted to everything nowadays. But sometimes a simple LED indicator is enough. I was entertained to read a blog by Ken Wada on embedded.com recently, where he sang the praises of a simple, blinking … Read More

RTOS, watchdog, LED