FROM
THE EDITOR
Ready to add WiMAX to your embedded design, but don’t know where to start? Amy Malagamba takes us on a fast-paced, non-fat, double-shot tour of one of the hottest new standards in her latest feature article. WiMAX has a lot to offer in that fuzzy, bigger-than-a-LAN but not-quite-a-WAN wireless connectivity zone.
Next we have part two of “The Challenges of an Embedded Software Engineer” which is a series we started back in October with part one. This time, Madison Turner talks about the operating system decision, and how the embedded developer’s choices differ from those of the desktop developer.
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Embedded Technology Journal
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Beverly Hills 802.16
WiMAX, You da MAN
You know what they say about technophiles: Give us a wireless inch and we’ll take a wireless mile.
Actually, make that a wireless metropolitan area network. It seems like only yesterday that we were content,
even ecstatic, with a wireless network in our homes. Then we said, “Hey, if only we could use our wireless
technology while drinking coffee in a small cafe, our lives would be complete.” Once we got a taste of
non-fat, grande, double-shot Internet espresso, we wanted to put our coffee in a to-go cup, move our laptop
applications to our phones (which have suddenly become curiously large again), and roam around town, sipping
and surfing on the run. And lately, we’re wondering why we can’t bring broadband access with us
when we go, well, anywhere. To recap, we were happy with a wireless PAN, then we wanted a wireless LAN, then we
simply had to have a wireless MAN, and now, frankly, we see no reason why we can’t have a
wireless WAN.
Unless you’ve been hiding in some dark cubicle night and day for the past year (which, admittedly, is easier for this audience than for most), you’ve heard about WiMAX, a.k.a. IEEE 802.16, and the promise that it brings for both the fixed and mobile sides of the broadband wireless market. Learning more about it is a bit like swimming backward through acronym soup with a side of evolving standards, but such is life with a ground-breaking global standard.
[more]
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The Challenges of an Embedded Software Engineer Part 2: Decisions, Decisions
by Madison Turner, Accelerated Technology, a Mentor Graphics Division
This is the second of three articles comparing the challenges embedded developers face with the lot of their counterparts in desktop development. The first article discussed how to start development before any hardware is available. This one moves on to the phase of development where hardware exists, or good simulation and prototyping solutions have been found, and software development begins in earnest.
Has the industry reached a point where embedded developers are on equal footing with desktop coders? Not quite.
To start with, developers working in desktop environments can count on having an enterprise operating system. These days, that usually means Windows or Linux, but it could just as easily be Mac OS X or a commercial Unix flavor. All these operating systems have much in common for the developer. Developers can reasonably expect to remain thoroughly ignorant of the underlying hardware platform that the software will be running on. They can also take for granted that the operating system will handle the details of memory management and multitasking, that the memory and processing power available to the application are virtually unlimited, and that a wide range of middleware APIs are available for use.
[more]
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