By Vincent Perrier
Specifying and validating embedded systems and chips becomes increasingly challenging as feature sets and non-functional constraints grow. It’s especially difficult when the system involves a multicore programmable platform, which includes several processing engines such as microprocessors, microcontrollers or DSPs, that run application software distributed across the various cores.
The development of the hardware (HW) [...]

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Green Hills Software, Inc., the largest independent vendor of embedded software solutions, today announced a comprehensive software development and run-time management solution for embedded products based on the multicore Freescale QorIQ™ P2020 and P2010 communications processors. Components of the Green Hills Software development toolkit include the INTEGRITY® RTOS and INTEGRITY Secure Virtualization (ISV), optimizing C/C++ [...]

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In industry surveys, more than 80% of embedded systems software developers report using either C or C++ as their primary programming language. Yet as a group, they earned a failing grade on a multiple-choice evaluation of their firmware-related C knowledge.
In December of 2007, an Embedded C Quiz was launched online as part of a redesigned [...]

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TenAsys Corporation, a provider of real-time OS and virtualization software, has announced that all of its embedded virtualization software products, including the INtime real-time OS for Windows, provide full support for new 2010 Intel Core processors and companion chipsets for the embedded market.
The TenAsys INtime RTOS works alongside Windows to provide fully deterministic processing of [...]

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Marvell Technology said today that it’s figured out a way to deliver the first-ever quad-core ARM-based application processor for cell phones and other mobile devices. More cores equals more performance, of course, and Marvell says its quad-core ARM chips will deliver “gigahertz-plus” performance.
Currently Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset is the leader in ARM-based processors for phones, with [...]

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By Jacob Borgeson
Microcontrollers (MCUs) today are amazing examples of synergy and innovation. Anywhere from 30,000 to 2 million gates are contained on a single chip, and up until very recently, the various integrated components and modules were considered advanced ICs on their own.
For example, currently a typical MCU device (Figure 1, below) may contain the [...]

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By Jacob Borgeson
The level of innovation in companies throughout the supply chain has increased significantly in the past few months. Engineers are now turning their attention away from marginal improvements that were designed to keep products coming out in the pipeline to more long-term achievements that can bring a new paradigm to the market.
Many end [...]

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Freescale Semiconductor is offering the QorIQ P1012/P1021 family, with the QUICC Engine multiprotocol technology, delivering high-performance, low-power migration path to all-IP environments for customers using legacy multiprotocol interfaces.
Most embedded multicore processors integrate general-purpose CPUs not optimized for data-plane tasks, thus requiring more or faster CPUs to deliver the same level of performance for multiprotocol processing. [...]

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By Aashish Mehta
“In today’s competitive environment, prototyping is necessary to understand customers, create a new market or attend to what has been ignored by industry leaders. The big problem is that most engineers don’t see the benefits of prototyping and are not convinced that it is an effective way of developing and using a prototype.
This [...]

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In then the past few years we have seen multiprocessing systems become more mainstream, in fact most modern personal computer CPU’s now feature symmetric multiprocessing systems (SMP), where multiple instantiations of the same processor share the processing burden of the applications running on the PC.
While SMP’s are quite common today, we typically have not seen [...]

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Imagination Technologies Group plc has announced a forthcoming series of embedded processors under the name “Meta Connected Processor” intended to support Internet-connectivity in low-cost consumer products.
The family of cores will combine versions of Imagination’s 32-bit Meta multithreaded processor and Ensigma programmable communications technologies. The combination is already used in consumer broadcast applications, thereby combining the [...]

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Sundance, the leading supplier and manufacturer of advanced digital signal processing and reconfigurable FPGA systems, today celebrates its 20th anniversary of design, manufacture and supply of multiprocessor systems. Thousands of systems have been shipped to customers across the world delivering hundreds of millions of gates and billions of MIPS processing performance. By consistently pushing the [...]

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by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor - EDN
Texas Instruments’ new six-core TMS320C6472 DSP boasts a 3.68W power-use sweet spot when operating all six cores at 500 MHz with 80% usage.
The cores support 625- and 700-MHz operation with a trade-off of energy efficiency at the 500-MHz operation point. The device includes 4.8 Mbytes of L1 and L2 [...]

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Accellera Participates in International SoC Conference Panel on Improving Design Productivity and IP Quality Through the Effective Use of Standards for Complex Multicore SoCs. Panelists from Accellera, the electronics industry organization focused on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) standards, and The SPIRIT Consortium will present on “Improving Design Productivity and IP Quality through the Effective Use [...]

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National Instruments today announced the expansion of its hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation platform, which includes numerous products that optimize embedded system validation. During the past six months alone, NI has released nearly 40 new products targeted at delivering flexible HIL solutions to embedded control system developers within a variety of industries. The portfolio of NI [...]

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By Rick Nelson, Editor in Chief — Test & Measurement World
Freescale Semiconductor’s test engineers deliver the data necessary to get the company’s six-core network processors to market.
Freescale Semiconductor is addressing the processing needs of wireless broadband equipment vendors with devices such as its MSC8156, a six-core DSP based on the company’s new SC3850 StarCore technology. [...]

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ARM today announced the launch of the ARM® Cortex™-A5 MPCore™ processor – the smallest, lowest power ARM multicore processor capable of delivering the Internet to the widest possible range of devices, from ultra low cost handsets, feature phones and smart mobile devices to pervasive embedded, consumer and industrial devices. Available as an extremely area- and [...]

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By Jack W. Crenshaw
NASA and their contractors were developing the hardware and control algorithms for spacecraft attitude control using control moment gyros (CMGs). We were developing a real-time, hardware-in-the-loop computer simulation that could test and simulate the behavior of the CMGs during typical simulated flights. I was developing the digital software; we had other computer [...]

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Green Hills Software, Inc., the largest independent vendor of embedded software solutions, today announced its new Embedded Virtualization Business Unit, representing a significant investment and commitment to virtualization in the embedded and special-purpose computing market. The business unit’s flagship product, INTEGRITY Secure Virtualization (ISV), supports hosting of Windows, Linux, VxWorks and other general purpose operating [...]

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By Giuseppe De Simone, Paolo Pierani, and Massimo Quagliani
Embedded software is by definition difficult to test: when running on the target, the code is not always reachable; debugging tools their limits; sometimes the software designer may have to code using assembly; hardware devices may have bugs–just to mention a few typical barriers to a fault-free [...]

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