Embedded Technology Journal Update

a techfocus media publication :: January 23, 2007 :: volume VI, no. 03

FROM THE EDITOR

This week, we take a look at the issues with security on embedded mobile devices, and the commercial end-to-end solutions available from Discretix. Security is a tough problem to solve in today’s mix-and-match platform architectures, so a comprehensive third-party security platform can eliminate a huge headache in bringing copyrighted media and other advanced features into your converged mobile device. Our latest feature has the details.

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. If you'd rather sound off in public, please post your comments or questions in our new Journal Forums.

Kevin Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal

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Embedded system complexity makes it hard to predict a design's performance. Simulation-based, virtual hardware prototypes help designers evaluate and optimize a design's performance before committing to silicon. Mentor’s Seamless HW/SW integration environment helps identify performance limitations and potential bottlenecks.

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CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES

DRM To Go
Discretix Locks Down Handsets
Consumer Electronics Show 2007
Embedded Reporting from the Front Lines
Conspicuous Consumerism
CES Takes Over Vegas
Embedded '06
Platform Proliferation
Next-Generation Requirements Management
by René Bellei, Ryma Technology Solutions
Embedded Sweden
Pea Soup and Pancakes
IDE Considerations for Remote Programming
by Jerome Lambourg, AdaCore
Success with System Simulation
Are Virtual Models Really Helpful?

JOURNAL WEBCASTS

Embedded Design with LatticeMico32 Open, Free 32-bit Soft Processor sponsored by Lattice Semiconductor

Speed Adoption of Intel® Multi-Core Processors with VirtualLogix Real-Time Virtualization™ Technology sponsored by VirtualLogix

Harnessing ModelSim Designer to Improve your FPGA Design Productivity sponsored by Mentor Graphics

Optimizing Verilog Coding for More Efficient FPGA Synthesis sponsored by Lattice Semiconductor

Designing 2Gbps Parallel I/O with the LatticeSC FPGA sponsored by Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice's new 90nm LatticeSC family--general introduction sponsored by Lattice Semiconductor

DRM To Go
Discretix Locks Down Handsets

Convergence is a cool concept. As embedded systems designers, once we’ve got a versatile computing platform constructed inside a mobile device, it’s exciting to think of all the plus-ones we can add by including plug-in software modules, small incremental pieces of hardware, or plug-and-play peripherals through standardized interfaces. The conceptual leap from mobile phone to PDA to media player is pretty small once you start down the path.

Unfortunately, slapping on the cool new features isn’t always the tricky part. Before your customers can lounge out listening to their favorite tunes, tune-in the latest video feed, or feed their curiosity with megabytes of proprietary data, you’ll need to convince the content providers that your device isn’t just a highly portable hole in their copyright protection scheme.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is becoming an increasingly important issue for developers of mobile devices. The embedded device environment, however, isn’t always completely security-friendly. We often craft our creations by sticking together hardware-IP, software, middleware, and other components from a variety of sources into Franken-systems that make a unified security scheme challenging to deliver. Often, the biggest security holes of all are in the glue that binds these disparate parts together. [more]