[Technology Report]
Developers Refine Their Embedded Wares For ESC
This spring's edition of the Embedded Systems Conference will serve up an array of announcements that build on existing platforms and standards.
Keep two watchwords in mind when you head to next month’s Embedded Systems Conference—more and better. Scheduled for April 14-18 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., this year’s show will reveal a number of incremental improvements as companies deliver systems based on established standards and product lines. For example, Intel will offer its latest Xeon processor chip sets with an eye on power management.
The tech sessions will remain a big part of the conference, which are a major draw for most engineers. Mainstays like “DSP Demystified” and “C (and C++) Gotchas” will return. You’ll also find a larger concentration in areas such as power management with “Let Sleeping Chips Lie: Programming for Low Power” and security in “Seven Steps for Developing Secure Mobile Devices.”
The “Build Linux Applications with the MicroBlaze Soft Processor” session will highlight the uptick in general FPGA usage. Likewise, strong interest continues in areas such as operating systems and development frameworks. For instance, there’s a session on “Eclipse—Up Close and Personal.”
A few of you may sit in on these sessions simply to polish your resume. On that note, you can expect a good bit of traffic at the ESC Career Fair, given the current economic forecast. Of course, the fair is a panoply of the latest technology, and that includes plenty of new software packages.
SAN JOSE SOFTWARE LynuxWorks will showcase its LynxSecure separation kernel. Separation kernels provides a robust environment where mixing secure and non-secure operating systems (OSs) is common. It allows legacy systems to run side by side with new application platforms. Hypervisor technology offers isolation while taking advantage of the virtualization and multicore capabilities of the latest processor chips.
LynxSecure supplies a base for LynuxWorks’ LynxOS real-time operating system (RTOS), which now can provide time-space partitioning and OS virtualization. These features resemble those of other RTOSs that will be on display, such as Green Hills Software’s Integrity and its Padded Cell Secure technology—same idea, different name.
Security will take up a larger chunk of the announcements at ESC, partly due to customer demand and partly due to the need to build up the infrastructure to support networked devices. Also, developers are starting to understand and demand this type of support.
At the lower end of the spectrum, attendees can take a gander at Microsoft’s .NET Micro Framework 2.5. This platform targets midrange 32-bit platforms with a new low footprint of 128 kbytes of RAM and 256 kbytes of flash. This includes a new, native TCP/IP and room for at least one application. Plenty of single-chip solutions now can address this platform. The number goes even higher for those that utilize external memory.
This latest incarnation of the .NET Micro Framework adds support for the Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS), which is found on .NET’s larger siblings, including Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded. DPWS allows network devices to locate each other and collaborate, as well as subscribe to events. Of course, an even broader range of processors supports the . NET Micro Framework, including chips from Atmel and NXP. These ARM-based solutions are an ideal fit. Also in
the ARM space, Hitex Development Tools offers its support for STMicroelectronics’ Cortex-M3-based STM32 microcontroller (Fig. 1). The development kit includes the HiTOP development environment. Integration with the Tasking VX-compiler is available as well.
The development environment features the DashBoard graphical user interface, which lets users configure the device and view the effects of an application while it’s running. The evaluation board has interfaces for USB, CAN, USART, and IrDA, plus an optional extension I/O board.
You may also do well to stop by the Eclipse PluginFest 2008 and see the latest Eclipse-based development tools. This event, which overlaps ESC, will be held at Wind River’s offices in nearby Sunnyvale, Calif., April 16-17.
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