a techfocus media publication :: October 11, 2005 :: volume I, no. 02
| a techfocus media publication :: October 11, 2005 :: volume I, no. 02 |
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The People's RTOS The proletariat may carry the seeds of its own embedded operating system, but sometimes even intensive idealism needs a little corporate help. While commercial-grade Linux may sound like an oxymoron, the socially-minded souls who seek to break down the barriers of IP protectionism are far more adept at creating cutting-edge software than at qualifying and supporting the resulting releases. That’s where companies like Wind River can make a big difference. Don’t picture McDonald’s in Red Square. Think instead of a John Deere tractor running bio-diesel on an organic produce farm. It’s corporate infrastructure providing assistance to the idealists on their own terms, and toward their own goals. Open-source operating systems (and specifically embedded Linux) have been making big gains in the device software space. Development teams are attracted by the lack of licensing fees and contracts, lower cost of ownership, perceived portability, and broad availability of the underlying software and source code. Unfortunately, some of the mechanisms that create these attractive benefits also carry hidden (and not-so-hidden) penalties. Finding the right release (distribution), finding or creating a test suite that matches that distribution, getting support (since software that comes from nowhere has nobody answering the phones), and tracking the current and appropriate versions for your application can all pose serious challenges for the system design team taking advantage of open-source’s advantages.
Connecting the Dots The leg bone’s connected to the ankle bone Huh? What happened to the gas pedal being connected to the, er, carburetor? What happened is that our cars have evolved to become, essentially, complex, networked, embedded systems - big ones. An average car when I was a kid back in the ’70s had just a small number of electronic components – lights (yes, we all had those, but it seemed like a head or tail light was always burning out), a slick and fancy 8-track “audio system,” and possibly air conditioning -- not much else. Electronics in these vehicles accounted for just a sliver of the purchase price of the car, and didn’t cause much of a ruckus for warranties. [more]
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LATEST NEWS October 11, 2005 AeroComm's New Software-Controllable Option Adds Extreme Distance to Wireless Communication Atmel's FingerChip Featured in FingerGear's Computer-On-a-Stick Biometric Edition October 10, 2005 Analog Devices Introduces Advanced Circuits for Industrial and Instrumentation Applications eSOL Releases Multitasking Kernel and FAT File System for TI’s Latest Portable Audio Processor CSR Enables the First MP3 Wireless Streaming in Samsung GSM Handsets Microsoft Announces Comprehensive Virtualization Strategy to Enable Self- Managing Dynamic Systems Superior Signal Integrity Puts Altera's Stratix GX FPGAs Into Ceterus Networks' New Cross Connect October 7, 2005 Attero Tech Supports Cirrus Logic's CobraNet Technology with New CO2 Demo Platform October 6, 2005 Freescale Sets Dates for 2006 Technology Forum Sarnoff H.264 Silicon IP Now on ARM Processors for High-Quality Video on Mobile Devices October 5, 2005 |
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