Embedded Technology Journal Update

a techfocus media publication :: February 6, 2007 :: volume VI, no. 05

FROM THE EDITOR

This week, we take a look at the power of easy evaluation to introduce paradigm-changing products like Enqirq’s DeviceSQL. While coding with SQL may be old hat for database application developers, it’s a major shift in style in the embedded community. Our latest feature article takes a look.

Next up, we have a contributed article from Al Hawtin of Elliptic Semiconductor. Al discusses the ins and outs of DRM and presents an architecture that makes DRM a manageable, flexible process while maintaining a secure environment and a friendly experience for end-users.

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

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

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CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES

Pushing a Progressive Paradigm
Encirq Opens Access
Digital Rights Management in Silicon
The Balance between Content Owners and Consumers
by Al Hawtin, Elliptic Semiconductor
Actel Activates Platforms
Roadmap Solidifies Embedded Processor Strategy
Soft Processing and Customizable IP Enable Flexible, High Performance Embedded Design
by Jay Gould, Xilinx, Inc.
DRM To Go
Discretix Locks Down Handsets
Consumer Electronics Show 2007
Embedded Reporting from the Front Lines

Pushing a Progressive Paradigm
Encirq Opens Access

Evolutionary products are easy to launch. You crow about this or that creative “plus-one” feature or brag about how you’ve boosted gas mileage from 25MPG to 28MPG – consumers have an easy time with that. A one-to-one replacement for an established, existing product or capability makes for easy customer transition and low barrier to adoption.

Revolutionary products are more difficult, however, particularly when they require a behavior change in the end customer. Even in high-tech, the industry with the inertia and historical appreciation of the city of Las Vegas - the business that makes its living throwing out the old and bringing in the new – there is considerable reluctance for engineers to drop old ways of working and proven methodologies in favor of newer ones. This is often true even if the new method appears to offer substantial advantages over the status-quo. [more]

Digital Rights Management in Silicon
The Balance between Content Owners and Consumers
by Al Hawtin, Elliptic Semiconductor

Security design is the most challenging area of endeavor for system designers because it requires an extraordinary effort to build a system that offers robust security and ensures that people will use it effectively as part of their everyday lives. Any IT administrator who oversees an IPsec virtual private network or passwords for sensitive applications fully understands the challenge of ensuring that users maintain discipline access methodology. If security design is difficult to administer in a corporate environment, then imagine what is required to migrate good security practice to the consumer world! The industry now has enough good experience (Apple iPOD) as well as the extremely bad practice (Sony’s Rootkit debacle) to get it right. Elliptic has been working with its customers to refine the security use model and to build an architecture that meets the divergent goals of consumers versus content owners. This is explored in more detail in this article. [more]