Last week, I talked about learning about embedded software and suggested various sources of information, including books, promising a review of a new book sometime soon. In the meantime, I have had the chance to take a look at the new book “Software Engineering for Embedded Systems” by Robert Oshana and Mark Kraeling.
My first impression was that the book is enormous – over 1000 pages … Read More
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
I am often asked – typically by young engineers and college students – how to learn about doing embedded software. It is a fair question. Although there are some good college courses around nowadays, they can still be hard to find.
So, how do you acquire the specialist skills needed to develop software for embedded systems? …
There are, of course, many possible ways to learn stuff:
university/college
learning … Read More
It is very likely that you will be getting either Linux or Android operating systems as part of your Infotainment System or Instrument Cluster in a latest model car. Designs based on these operating systems are now getting into production, with some European OEMs going first but many others close behind. How designers chose which operating system to use is a very current debate – the popularity and … Read More
It has always seemed obvious to me that a particular characteristic that makes embedded software different from desktop programming is the close relationship with hardware. As most embedded devices are custom designs, the hardware platform is something of an unknown. So, it is clear that the development of the hardware and software should be done in a cooperative fashion.
Mentor Graphics is unique … Read More
Hello all – Matt Radochonski from the Mentor Embedded marketing team with an update on our new board support packages for the last two months.
You may have noticed from our monthly newsletters that we’ve released new BSP’s for Nucleus RTOS, Nucleus SmartFit and Nucleus ReadyStart for ARM and PPC architectures as well as TI, STMicroelectronics and Freescale MCU’s. Below is a … Read More
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
It has been interesting to be involved in the evolution of the GENIVI Linux Infotainment solution, and the progress of early adopters taking their implementations to market. At the GENIVI All-Members meeting in Barcelona last week, BMW presented some details of their 3-year journey to take a GENIVI 1.0 Compliant Linux-based platform into production, scheduled for later this year.
The early … Read More
Pre-Silicon Software Development with Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition
I recently got a crash course in hardware/software design workflows. While my software background is strong, my hardware design knowledge is very light. Any thoughts I have on Karnaugh maps or rising edge flip-flops are quite dusty. Even so, I clearly understood the problems solved by the new Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition, … Read More
virtual edition, Veloce, virtual prototype, pre-silicon, QEMU, Emulation, Vista, SystemC, RTL, Sourcery Analyzer
Back from my travels, so a brief post painting with my impressions of last week’s event …
Design West [which I guess should now be called something different, as Design East has gone - preferably go back to it being Embedded Systems Conference] consisted of the conference itself and the trade show alongside. The show part seems to have been getting smaller each year. Although I have not … Read More
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
I recently posted about using Virtual Prototypes pre-silicon with the recently introduced Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition and mentioned that the same native software development approach can be used when RTL is available on emulators. This enables embedded software and hardware designers to exercise a HW design using actual SW, and a full stack which includes firmware, drivers, the operating system … Read More
virtual prototype, emulator, pre-silicon, Emulation, Veloce, virtual edition, RTL
Mentor very recently introduced a product that brings together the so far separate worlds of EDA or SoC design from embedded software with the new Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition. There is now a way pre-silicon to make use of native software development, for example running a complete Linux stack. This enables a number of things pre-silicon including:
Validation of HW/SW SoC interfaces
Integration … Read More
pre-silicon, Sourcery Analyzer, Emulation, virtual prototype, Vista, virtual edition
This week I am at Design WEST in San Jose, California. This is an annual pilgrimage for me – even though I still think of it as being the Embedded Systems Conference.
This year I am participating in the conference in two events:
First, I have a class titled “How to Measure RTOS Performance“, which takes place on Thursday at 09:15. If you would like a copy of the slides, please email … Read More