As I spend a lot of my time talking about embedded software via a variety of media – conferences, articles, Web seminars, this blog are examples – I frequently get emails requesting copies of materials or posing questions. All of this communication is very welcome and I do my best to respond promptly and, where I can, usefully.
If I think a question might be of wider interest, it seems … Read More
Crystal ball gazing is a hazardous activity. However, this week I am going to take the risk. I have the honor of having been invited to present a keynote speech at a technical conference in Grenoble, France. Although I speak at conferences frequently, I normally have some constraints with the topic - normally I am presenting a paper, an abstract for which was submitted and accepted months before. On … Read More
Tags: Multicore, User Interface, Low Power, Android, Inflexion
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
Tags: Low Power, User Interface, MCAPI, ARM, Multicore, Android
Android addicts are everywhere. Even those who didn’t anticipate using a larger number of apps on their smart phones are finding themselves downloading a new app almost daily. Google’s Android mobile operating system (OS) is making waves throughout the commercial market; and now, thanks to Raytheon engineers in Waltham, Mass., it is likely to change the face of the digital battlefield.
Soldiers are … Read More
Tags: Microsoft, Mentor.com, Hardware, Apple, apps, iPhone, Mentor, Mentor Graphics, Android, Embedded Systems, COTS, Design, Engineer, battlefield, Geek, Computer, Google, DoD, Design Automation, Electronic, Xbox, network-centric, UAV, Warfighters, soldier, soldiers, Raytheon, Software, Operating System, PSP
I like simple things. Excessive complexity tends to annoy me. When I first started working with computers, I thought that mainframes were overly complicated, so I was pleased to discover minicomputers, where I could really understand exactly what was going on. Embedded software was a natural progression, as, again, I could grasp the entire functionality of the software. But that began to change, as … Read More
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
I have always for medical electronics interesting and I have blogged about it from time to time [here and here, for example]. Part of the reason for my interest stems from an occasional feeling that so much of the electronics around me is ultimately pointless. Many Mentor Embedded customers are making consumer devices, cell phones and other gadgets. Do we really need all of these? Aren’t they really … Read More
Tags: Android, User Interface, Networking, Inflexion UI, Low Power, Linux, Multicore, Medical, Nucleus, RTOS
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
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
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
Tags: Nucleus, MCAPI, Linux, IPC, Multicore, Nucleus Kernel, Interprocessor Communication, Android