Posts tagged with 'Freescale'
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
I am very interested in the pros and cons of various programming languages for embedded applications. Although I mostly favor C, I sometimes prefer C++, but I am open to suggestions. I started out writing assembly language and still feel that this is the “real thing”. This is a topic I posted about some time ago. I expanded my thoughts in a more recent article on embedded.com
I am always … Read More
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
Freescale picked Beijing and Bangalore for their recent Technology Forum events – two very different cities, but some common themes at both events. Noticeable at both events was a tremendous appetite for new technology – around 1500 designers attended each event, hungry for new innovations particularly in the areas of smart energy, connected devices, automotive, and home-automation. China’s semiconductor … Read More
I am on vacation and, all being well, by the time this posting goes live, I will be sunning myself on a Greek island. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a blog about the use of floating point. My colleague Brooks Moses [who did a guest blog post a while back] made a comment on that posting, pointing out that I had over-simplified my example. I am always happy to get such feedback.
It transpired that Brooks … Read More
M4, Zynq, Cortex, e600, ARM, FPGA, Freescale, floating point
Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) describes the use of two power saving techniques (dynamic frequency scaling and dynamic voltage scaling) used to save power in embedded systems including cell phones. This type of power saving is different from what most of us generally think about like standby or hibernate power states. All of these are useful of course. You can reduce the power consumed … Read More
I was involved in a discussion about driver workload management the other week. It is a fascinating topic and I can see it becoming a much more important feature of in-vehicle HMIs in the coming years. The basic concept is pretty straightforward – when a driver is in a high workload situation (e.g. driving at 70mph on a crowded freeway), the HMI adapts so that the functionality available to the driver … Read More
CAN/LIN, Medical, Energy, Freescale, Ethernet, Infotainment, MOST, Automotive, IVI, SoC, flexray
Over the years, I have found it very interesting tracking trends and “fashions” in embedded software. At any given time, certain technologies are “hot”. Sometimes the source of excitement seems to come out of nowhere; other times, it is a natural evolution. And thus it is with HPC – High Performance Computing.
Somehow this does not sound like the province of embedded software, … Read More
Today, more ‘things’ are connected to the Internet than there are people on the planet. Connectivity was a major theme at last week’s Freescale FTF event in San Antonio, Texas. There were over 1300 attendees, and around 200 technical sessions over the course of 4 days. An impressive range of SoC solutions aimed at connectivity covered such diverse applications, from Medical, Energy Management, Safety … Read More
IVI, Infotainment, Medical, CAN/LIN, Automotive, MOST, flexray, Freescale, SoC, Energy, Ethernet
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
Nowadays, there is a perception that the higher end embedded CPU is dominated by ARM. Obviously, these devices are very popular, as evidenced by the various ARM Tech Con events around the world. However, I remember the world before ARM, when “embedded 32-bit device” meant Motorola 68000 family. Motorola Semiconductor became Freescale, who are still a force to be reckoned with.
Freescale’s … Read More
Mentor Graphics is an EDA [Electronic Design Automation] company, which means that the core of the business is supplying [software] tools to facilitate the development [design, implementation and deployment] of electronic systems. Traditionally, this meant hardware design. But, over the last 20 years, there has been an enormous escalation in the use of microprocessors and microcontrollers and embedded … Read More