Embedded Software Blog

I was recently approached for help by a Mentor Graphics customer, who was planning a new project and needed to select an operating system. They wanted guidance with that choice. Of course, one is tempted to say that it does not matter which of our products they chose [as, between them, Nucleus RTOS and Mentor Embedded Linux do cover most possibilities], but I felt they needed something more objective. There … Read More

Windows CE, Source Code, Linux, Low Power, RTOS, Networking, Nucleus

I have a very basic question for you: what do you do and why do you do it? It is quite possible that, if you are reading this, you are an embedded software engineer. It is interesting to consider what that job actually entails. First off, how would you reply to the “What do you do?” question from someone you meet in a pub/bar? You would probably say Software Engineer, but they might ask you to expand … Read More

Source Code

If, like many embedded software developers, you need to work "close to the hardware", you will want to be able to visualize the bit patterns that map on to CPU and peripheral registers. The obvious way to do this is in binary, as you can see the 1s and 0s directly. However, I do not think that I have ever seen the option, even in assembly language, to include binary constants in software. Do feel free … Read More

Binary, Source Code

It is an interesting question: when do you need the source code in order to reuse some software and when would binary [i.e. a black box] be quite satisfactory? With an embedded operating system the answer is far from obvious. There is even a question as to what source code really is. If you ask an engineer whether he would like to have the source code for an OS or any other reusable software, the … Read More

DO-178B, Nucleus, Medical, Avionics, Certification, Source Code, Nucleus Kernel, RTOS