Mentor Blogs

Last week, I attended the Embedded Developers’ Forum in Munich, Germany. This is an increasingly common type of event – a small conference, with a somewhat broad subject coverage, with multiple streams offering a greater level of specialization. In this case, there were about 4 “mini-conferences”. I was presenting in part of the Embedded Software event. Another set of streams … Read More

Nucleus, RTOS

I have often observed that the world of embedded software is usually dominated by a small number of “fashionable” topics – technology that everybody is talking and/or concerned about. The key one just now, which I have discussed before, is the influence that software has on device power consumption. This is a topic to which I will certainly return. A number of the Mentor Embedded … Read More

Freescale, FTF, RTOS, Low Power, Nucleus

An article by my colleague Faheem Sheikh has just been published in EE Times, which covers multicore thread synchronization. Apart from the interesting topic of the piece, it is also an opportunity to learn more about symmetric multi-processing [SMP] – an option increasingly available for real time operating systems, like Nucleus. … Read More

multi-core, Nucleus, SMP, RTOS

I have posted a couple of times recently [like here] about a recent webinar that I conducted on measuring RTOS performance. This is a topic that appears to be of significant interest to most RTOS users, so I thought it might be a good time to pick up on a key detail of the issue. My colleague Rizwan Rasheed suggested a little while ago that the measurement and specification of RTOS interrupt latency … Read More

interrupt latency, Nucleus, RTOS

As I mentioned previously, I presented a Web seminar last week. The topic was the measurement of RTOS performance. To be frank, I was unsure how popular this might be, though I have found that, at conferences, the topic seems to draw a reasonable audience, so I was quietly optimistic. As it turned out, there was a very good attendance, with lots of questions, which kept me busy right up until the end … Read More

Nucleus, RTOS

There is still a common misconception that a real time system is simply one that responds quickly to demands. Although a real time system may, indeed, be fast, its key characteristic is predictability. A real time system is deterministic – its response to an event will occur in a timely fashion, neither too quickly nor too slowly. It is common to use a real time operating system [RTOS - like … Read More

Nucleus, RTOS, Webinar

I was lucky enough to be invited to a preview of the results from UBM’s annual survey of embedded developers. This survey is carried out every year and provides a valuable opportunity to see trends by comparing year on year changes. To be frank, a lot of the data is unsurprising and many factors never seem to change. However, from time to time, clear trends emerge and there can even be surprises. … Read More

RTOS, UBM

This week sees the 10th anniversary of the Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, Germany. This show and conference has been growing steadily over the years and I guess it is now the biggest event devoted to embedded systems in the world. I am fortunate enough to attend Embedded World most years, as I reported here and here, and this year is no exception. I have two papers in the conference: “USB … Read More

Embedded World, Nucleus, USB, RTOS

Last week I wrote about a test harness for applications using an RTOS. The idea was to have a library of functions corresponding to the API calls of a particular RTOS. Specific tasks of an application, that are under test, would be linked to this library to enable the code to be executed on a desktop computer in a useful way. I had some feedback on this posting from a couple of people, talking about … Read More

Debugging, API, RTOS, test harness, Nucleus

I was talking about OS-aware debuggers and someone asked me whether I could suggest a technique for unit testing of code for a multi-threaded application. It took me a while before I could fully understand what they were after, but it did become clear eventually. They were considering an environment where a number of engineers were working on an embedded application [using Nucleus]. Each guy was developing … Read More

Nucleus, test harness, Debugging, RTOS, API

Somebody asked me: “What is the plural of Linux?” Maybe it is Linuxes. That sounds a bit messy, which seems rather appropriate really… If we think about the desktop world and buying application software, you might have a Windows PC or a Mac or perhaps you run Linux. It is typical for the spec for an application to discuss hardware and OS compatibility. There will normally be ridiculously … Read More

Linux, Nucleus, RTOS

It is October, which is always the start of a busy time of year for me. Most people I know are preoccupied with returning to school or the change in weather heralding the approach of Winter, but I am contemplating all the conferences that I need to attend. It is the same every year. The world of embedded software goes quiet during the Summer, then everyone realizes that they have sales targets to make … Read More

Development Tools, RTOS, USB

As I have mentioned before, I am always interested in user surveys, as they do offer some kind of glimpse into what is going on the world of embedded software development. The recently published VDC Embedded Engineering Survey [summary available here] shows up some interesting results and trends. However, it does, like with many surveys, raise nearly as many questions as it provides answers … One … Read More

RTOS, VDC, USB, Development Tools

Just a quick “heads up”. If you are interested in the selection of an operating system for embedded applications [a topic I discussed briefly here] you might like to attend a Web seminar that I am presenting later this week. The session will be less than one hour, including live Q&A. The live session will be on Thursday at 9:00 Pacific and an archive recording will be available after … Read More

Linux, multi-core, RTOS, Multi-OS, Nucleus

Embedded software development tools are important to all developers and a topic that I frequently discuss [like here]. The way such tools are described by vendors is interesting. For example, there might be a reference to an “optimizing compiler”. That is rather meaningless, as all compilers are optimizing to at least some degree. For an embedded compiler, the important factors are the quality … Read More

RTOS, Development Tools, Debugging, profiling, Nucleus