Embedded Systems articles from May 2002

Embedded Systems archives from May 2002

Tasking develops RTOS in-house. (Operating Systems).
May 1, 2002... Tasking, the embedded software development arm of the Altium group is developing an RTOS in-house to expand its product portfolio. The company has traditionally supplied an RTOS from third parties but in line with the group's intention to...

Lauterbach adds memory support. (Analysis).(TRACE32-PowerView is offered)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... The TRACE32-PowerView integrated development environment from Lauterbach now includes dynamic memory allocation analysis It is now possible to trace the data relevant for memory allocation during the run time and then analyse the...

Seamless networking - an impossible dream? (In the News).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... This month we have a number of articles covering wireless connectivity encompassing both Bluetooth and IEEE802.11. This sector seems to be one which loves to get embroiled in back-biting. The promoters of the different wireless technologies are...

Sybase boards Eclipse. (In Brief).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Sybase has been selected to serve on the Eclipse board of management. Eclipse is an open platform for tool integration built by software development tool vendors and tool developers, which was formed to create better development environments...

Xilinx adds 22 cores. (In Brief).(new and enhanced LogiCORE products)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Xilinx has released 22 new and enhanced LogiCORE products for use with its Virtex-II family of FPGAs. New cores in the release include a digital down converter (DDC), a CORDIC, a multiply-accumulate-based finite impulse response (MAC FIR)...

Trio work for 3D. (In Brief).(ARM, Imagination Technologies and Superscape are collaborating)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... ARM, Imagination Technologies and Superscape are collaborating to develop and deliver powerful, seamless 3D experiences to users of mobile devices. Superscape's Swerve 3D enabling software technology (comprising Swerve Client, Swerve Author and...

Red Hat goes orange. (In Brief).(A facility in the Netherlands is being used)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Red Hat has started local language training and certification for the RHCE programme in the Netherlands at a facility based in Zoetermeer outside Amsterdam. It complements similar services provided elsewhere including France, Germany, Italy,...

Integrity improves security and HA. (Operating Systems).(Green Hill Software's Integrity Version 4.0 is for use in high-availability embedded applications)
May 1, 2002... Version 4.0 of Green Hills Software's Integrity royalty-free, real-time operating system (RTOS) is for use in high-availability embedded applications that required added security, reliability, real-time performance and testability. The...

Jungo to speed driver development for EZ-USB. (USB Drivers).(Jungo Software Technologies WinDriver)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Cypress Semiconductor is to provide customers for its EZ-USB chipset with Jungo Software Technologies WinDriver, a cross platform driver development toolkit. WinDriver provides automatic driver code generation for the EZ-USB device family and...

Siroyan DSP core ready for action. (Digital Signal Processing).(SRA328 is a soft core)
May 1, 2002... The SRA328 is the first soft core from Siroyan in its family of synthesizable cores based on the OneDSP architecture. It provides a fully-scalable performance level from 400 to 3200MMACs at 200MHz enabling it to target a range of applications,...

Telelogic signs wireless LAN deal with Silaria for 802.11 solution. (IP for Wireless LAN).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Telelogic has signed a contract to provide a solution for the IEEE 802.11 standard to processor developer Silaria. Parts of the standard for the 802.11 MAC protocol have been documented in SDL using Telelogic's Tau SDL development tools. ...

uCLinux for Snapgear. (In Brief).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Supplier of consumer VPN router appliances and OEM custom design solutions, Snapgear, has added shared library support for the uClinux kernel. This support provides memory advantages for embedded developers by allowing applications to share...

CodeWarrior has intent. (In Brief).(Metrowerks offers the development tools)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Metrowerks is shipping a set of tools that enables application and content development for Tao Group's intent portable media platform for consumer appliances. CodeWarrior development tools for intent lets developers create and deploy content...

Matlab drives Keithley. (In Brief).(Keithley Instruments)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Users of Keithley Instruments' data acquisition boards can now communicate with their devices directly from MathWorks' Matlab via an interface provided with the MATLAB Data Acquisition Toolbox to ease acquisition of data within Matlab.

Migration to Nucleus. (In Brief).(MapuSoft Technologies' OSChanger for Nucleus version 2.1 has been tested)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... OSChanger for Nucleus, version 2.1 from MapuSoft Technologies has been tested on ARM, PowerPC, 68k, x86, MIPS, Hitachi SH and Excalibur NIOS processors and has also been designed to run with Accelerated Technology's codelab Embedded Developer...

Accelerator IP speeds DSP algorithms. (Technology).(Elixent offers the DFA1000 family)
May 1, 2002... The DFA1000 family of accelerators from Elixent are for use with standard RISC processors running DSP algorithms. Designed to improve performance compared with DSPs, this is the first implementation of D-Fabrix, the company's reconfigurable...

Moon2 improves Java applications. (Technology).(Vulcan Machines launches the processor)
May 1, 2002... VULCAN Machines has also released its second-generation processor for Java-based technology. Moon2 is a 32bit microprocessor core designed for use in highperformance, low-power, Java-based embedded systems. The processor is available as Soft IP...

Easing the integration of operating systems. (Technology).(OSE Gateway is a software solution)(Product/Service Evaluation)
May 1, 2002... OSE Gateway is a software solution to enable connectivity at the operating system level. It provides a way for Windows, Solaris, Linux and VxWorks to be used together in a heterogeneous distributed system. This design incorporates the same...

Frost & Sullivan see blue future. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2002... Through 2001 the Bluetooth semiconductor market began to develop into the most competitive segment of the overall Bluetooth industry according to market researchers, Frost & Sullivan. With many of the early developers moving to production of...

Incredible journey ahead for WLANs. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).(Industry Overview)
May 1, 2002... Despite a slow economy, wireless LAN (WLAN) chips were a bright spot in an otherwise dismal 2001 worldwide chip market, according to InStat/MDR. The market research firm reports that the number of WLAN chips sold worldwide in 2001 managed to...

Bringing the benefits of Java to Bluetooth: C Bala Kumar and Paul Kline of Motorola explain how an API has been specified to ease integration. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).
May 1, 2002... How an end user will use Bluetooth wireless technology varies from person to person. Two people with the same model of a Bluetooth enabled phone might want to use it for different purposes. One person might want to be able to download video...

802.11b is dead - long live Bluetooth: Jennifer Bray of CSR attempts to counter the propaganda coming from some 802.11b evangelists. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).
May 1, 2002... That may be a Contentious headline for this piece, but the voice of Bluetooth needs to be heard above recent 802.11b propaganda - mainly emanating from the US. Like Mark Twain, any reports of its demise are an exaggeration. The truth is,...

Is outsourcing core technology the future of the wireless industry? (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).
May 1, 2002... Charles Chaussonnier, sales director EMEA at Wavecom explains the benefits of standard wireless solutions, which lets manufacturers concentrate on branding and product differentiation. The impending migration from 2G to 3G is often seen as...

Integration lowers costs for Bluetooth: Kelly Watson explains how licensing IP from Ericsson can cut the cost of developing products. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).
May 1, 2002... When adopting Bluetooth wireless technology, manufacturers have several choices. They can invest significant time and resources into complex chip development, purchase pre-made chips that are not easily modified, or they can use reusable...

IEEE 802.11g to benefit WLANs. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).(Intersil examines the draft standard)
May 1, 2002... Jim Zyren, director of strategic marketing for wireless networking at Intersil explains the draft standard and explains how its adoption is an important step for the introduction of dual band radios. Intersil's OFDM-based proposal for the...

An introduction to debugging Bluetooth in embedded systems. (Focus: Wireless Connectivity).
May 1, 2002... Clifford Chow and Gilbert Goodwill of Wind River Systems provide an overview of Bluetooth technology and examine the need for better development tools to increase its use. With the on-coming storm of Bluetooth-enabled products, the...

Removing development bottlenecks through integration of tools and OS: Many tools are used in embedded software development and, says QNX, integration is critical. (Focus: Operating Systems).
May 1, 2002... By its very nature, embedded software development requires an extraordinary range of tools--everything from code editors and debuggers to tools for memory analysis, trace analysis, execution profiling, code coverage, version control, remote...

The future of Java for embedded applications: Michael Mathews of Montavista explains how the combination of an embedded Linux OS and Java technologies can provide a option for flexible project development. (Focus: Operating Systems).
May 1, 2002... Today we are witnessing the dawning of a new age of information access and consumption for personal as well as business use. New types of information and new ways of using it are driving up demand for anytime and anywhere access, feeding a need...

Linux scheduler latency: Clark Williams of Red Hattakes a look at two of the patches developed to deal with scheduler latency. (Focus: Operating Systems).(Illustration)
May 1, 2002... Back in early November 2001, I started following a discussion between two factions of the Linux kernel community. The gist of the discussion was over what was the best solution to the Linux scheduler latency problem, that is the delay between...

Concurrent development of hardware & software. (Concurrency).(NVIDIA is developer of the GeForce range)
May 1, 2002... Dave Robertson, director of European operations at Perforce Software explains how graphics specialist, NVIDIA, uses software configuration management to ease the development of its GeForce range. Traditionally, hardware components land the...

Deep memory on scopes improves troubleshooting. (Verification).
May 1, 2002... A growing number of designs employ microcontrollers and DSPs, so it is not surprising, says Lisa Beyers of Agilent Technologies, that many of yesterdays oscilloscopes fall short of the mark. Getting to the heart of a circuit design problem...