Embedded Technology Journal Update

a techfocus media publication :: September 11, 2007 :: volume VIII, no. 11

FROM THE EDITOR

This week, Embedded Technology Journal looks at Freescale’s latest announcement – a new line of processors optimized for the low-cost networked storage market. These processors pave the way for a wide range of versatile, high-capacity, low-cost systems that will be of enormous benefit to consumers… like me. 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

EVENTS

Strengthen your skills and speed your time to market
at the ARM Developers’ Conference!
100 track sessions on embedded applications from hardware and software partners and ARM Licensees. Design centers and exhibitions on the show floor, forums and special analyst presentations, and the largest exhibition of ARM technologies in the world:
October 2-4, 2007, Santa Clara Convention Center
More Information

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Cortex™-M1, the FPGA-optimized ARM® processor, is the perfect solution for any portable or battery-operated application. It’s small, FREE and power-efficient when used with Actel’s flash-based M1-enabled FPGAs. Get started now!

Register to win Actel's Cortex™-M1 Development Kit

Free Job Postings on Journaljobs.com
JournalJobs.com – the job board for FPGA Journal and Embedded Technology Journal is now re-launching with a host of new features and capabilities. In celebration of JournalJobs.com grand re-opening, we’re offering free job postings through October 31, 2007. Go online, post a job, pay nothing, and watch for those qualified resumes to come knocking on your inbox.
Click here to post your job listing on Journaljobs.com

Free Seminar - Winning Webcasts
Does your company do webcasts? Want to make them better? Embedded Technology Journal's Amelia Dalton will show you how in this free online seminar "Winning Webcasts".
Click here to register!

CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES

Simplifying Storage
Freescale Family Targets SMB, SOHO, Consumer
Expanding IP Horizons
MIPS Acquires Chipidea
Mediocre Embedded Systems?
by Dick Selwood, Embedded Technology Journal
Modelling From the Belly of the Whale
by Dick Selwood, Embedded Technology Journal
Lessons from LinuxWorld
It’s Not Just for Servers Anymore
Nailing Jell-O to a Wall
Saving Software from the Slippery Slope
Imagine Cup 2007
Embedded Challenge Heats Up
Where am I?
GPS in Embedded Devices

JOURNAL WEBCASTS

Video Processing: Making the Picture Clear
(Texas Instruments)

Tips to Avoid Simultaneous Switching Output (SSO) Noise Problems (Lattice)

Leverage the best performance and debug features with the latest release of ModelSim (Mentor Graphics)

LatticeXP2 FPGAs: SRAM + Embedded Flash = No Compromise, Full-Featured Non-Volatile FPGA Design Solutions (Lattice)

Learn to Design with Stratix III FPGAs’ Programmable Power Technology & Selectable Core Voltage (Altera)

Using Processors in FPGAs? The industry's only soft IP ARM7 core for Flash FPGAs (Actel)

Simplifying Storage
Freescale Family Targets SMB, SOHO, Consumer

I was one of the early adopters of home theater PCs. Before the concept was widespread, I had assembled a PC with an HDTV card, a good sound card, a home theater amplifier and a plasma monitor. There were an incredible number of issues with the setup, but I was in it for the experimentation. The vagaries of sound card inputs and outputs compared to what home equipment wanted, conversion from VGA to component video (this was years before HDMI), and getting resolutions that the video card could produce and that the plasma would accept all cost dozens of hours of problem solving and led me to conclude that this technology was not ready for the average non-engineer consumer to embrace.

Beyond the basics, there were also numerous details that added to the challenge – how to remote control this ad-hoc collection of equipment along with applications on a PC, wireless keyboards and pointing devices with adequate range and reliability, mixing the cable company’s box with the HDTV DVR capabilities on the PC… At best, this system was not ready for prime time. At worst, it was a nightmare. At the time, my acid test was my teenage kids. When they couldn’t master its operation, I knew there was still more progress required.

One of the projects that went hand-in-hand with the hardware mix-and-match was the family media consolidation. I ripped hundreds of CDs, transferred thousands of family photos, (luckily, we don’t do home video or we’d have had a storage nightmare) and acquired extra disk space to handle the programs that we recorded from TV on our DVR card. Even with cheap disk space, it was a confusing and expensive proposition to get everything into one location where it could be accessed, backed up, and organized satisfactorily. [more]