FROM
THE EDITOR
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Embedded Technology Journal. We at Techfocus Media are excited to bring you the latest original feature articles, news, and technical information from the world of embedded technology. If you’re a system, software, or hardware engineer or project manager involved in embedded or device-specific design, we’ll keep you up to date with new product announcements and analysis, the latest technology trends, and in-depth discussion of the companies and people who are driving the industry.
In our first feature article this week, we take a look at the integration question. While the trend is always toward increased levels of integration, the decision about what and how to integrate is a complex engineering compromise. Integration for integration’s sake alone is not enough to drive such a major design decision. We walk you through the tradeoffs involved in reaching the right solution for your system.
Second, with ARM’s announcement of their new Cortex-M3 microcontroller (MCU) at the ARM Developer’s Conference this week, we have a contributed article from Travis Lanier, Product Manager for ARM, who takes us inside the new core for a look at the design decisions that led to this innovative new architecture.
The embedded RTOS world has divided itself into two major camps, commercial and open-source. On the commercial side, Microsoft has two entries, sometimes causing confusion among designers trying to choose the right OS for their architecture. Microsoft’s Mike Hall explains the difference between the two in our third article.
Our final contributed article this week comes from Accelerated Technology’s Robert Day. In the first of a three-part series, he compares the challenges faced by embedded software developers to those familiar to enterprise application developers. The embedded world is certainly a more unforgiving and ever-changing environment, and it pays to understand those challenges before embarking on an embedded software development project.
Thanks
for reading! If
there's anything we can do to make our publications
more useful to you, please let us know at: comments@embeddedtechjournal.com
Kevin
Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal
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Intelligent Integration
Considering the Costs of Convergence
We live in an age of integration and convergence. My typewriter, TV, telephone, record player, slide projector, file cabinet, and storage closet were long ago converged and integrated into my computer. Next, my computer, monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, and modem melded into my laptop. Now, my laptop, cell phone, MP3 player, digital camera, and pager are almost all rolled together into my smart phone. Moore’s Law and modern life have compressed, converged, combined, and cost-reduced our components into integrated, versatile, do-it-all devices. There is no question that the integration trend has bought us continuously improved capabilities and economies. However, while each of these fusions is designed to improve communication, convenience, cost, and portability, not all integrations are successful, or even a good idea in the first place.
As system designers, we encounter the integration question at a much lower level. Processors, peripherals, memory, interconnect, and storage are all basic components of almost every modern electronic system design. A successful system designer has to balance the forces of form factor, power, price, performance, reliability, security, scalability, and product evolution in order to make the crucial decision of what and how to integrate, and what to leave discrete. While there are myriad options available, there is no reliable formula or roadmap to guide us through this complex engineering tradeoff. [more]
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Architecture and Implementation of the Cortex-A8 Microprocessor
by Travis Lanier, ARM, Inc.
Introduction
When we designed the new ARM® Cortex™-A8 microprocessor, we wanted to bring a new level of performance and power efficiency to a wide range of mobile and consumer applications. These products, including mobile phones, set-top boxes, gaming consoles and automotive navigation/entertainment systems, require a large increase in processing capability over previous generations while still remaining within the previous generation’s power budgets. The Cortex-A8 processor, the first applications microprocessor in ARM’s new Cortex family, spans a range of performance points depending on the implementation, delivering up to 2000 Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS) of performance for demanding consumer applications and consuming less than 300mW for low-power mobile devices. Mobile will gain access to new levels of performance while consumer applications will benefit from the reduced heat dissipation and resulting lower packaging and integration costs.
[more]
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Comparing Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded
by Mike Hall, Windows Embedded, Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft ships two embedded operating systems: Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded, both designed for use within embedded systems. So how do you determine which one may be appropriate for your device?
On initial inspection, Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded may seem to be similar, since both are componentized operating systems, both expose similar programming interfaces (Win32, MFC, ATL, and support for .NET applications), and both expose similar operating system technologies, which include support for networking, internet browsers, media players, and so on. The choice of operating system becomes easier, however, when you understand the design goals of each operating system. [more]
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The Challenges of an Embedded Software Engineer
by Robert Day, Accelerated Technology, a division of Mentor Graphics
Part 1 – where is my hardware?
The first part of this 3-part article series looks at the challenges a software engineer faces in the embedded world as compared to that of a software engineer developing an enterprise application. It also provides insight into some of today’s available technologies that can help alleviate some of the product development challenges that the embedded software engineer may face.
First, there are many “knowns” in the enterprise software space. Developers usually develop on the same hardware (host machine) and software platform (i.e. operating system) that their final product will run on. Usually, it is a well-tested and well- known development environment that hasn’t changed over the multiple products that the developer has contributed to. [more]
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