Head for High Ground: Market Pressures Squeezing Value Up the Linux Software Stack

A number of market forces are limiting the ability of Linux software suppliers to extract revenue growth from the freely available open source software markets.

Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that embedded systems manufacturers and their suppliers are driving the development of open source and industry-specific standards around Linux as a means to increase availability of more robust underlying solution platforms and development environments. These new standards hold the opportunity for OEMs to reduce their development costs and time-to-market while at the same time keeping pace with the advancing and unique requirements of their customers in their core markets.

These industry- and market-specific initiatives have served to create more robust open source platforms that are cannibalizing some of the differentiation found in commercial releases. Now those companies, as well as virtually all others, must find new means of adding value, differentiating and driving revenue.

“The recent efforts to standardize around more robust, market-specific, feature-rich Linux platforms have the potential to accelerate adoption of Linux for a wide range of applications within the markets where these efforts are underway. Success in those markets has the potential to accelerate Linux adoption across the broader embedded device market,” says Chris Rommel, Research Associate with VDC’s Embedded Software Practice. “However, market pressures are coming from a number of directions that will require commercial suppliers of Linux solutions to manage an increasingly complex set of peers, partners and competitors. Suppliers of commercial Linux solutions will need to focus higher up the software stack in providing an ecosystem of value-added technology, and in so doing, as their OEM customers encroach on their traditional domain, commercial Linux suppliers must be wary of competing with some in the higher level domains.”

VDC explores these and other critical issues within the market for embedded Linux software solutions in the recently released report, Linux, Volume 1 from Track 1 of VDC’s 2008 Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service.

Embedded Systems Bulletin – April 2008

VDC attended last week’s 2008 Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose on April 15 and 16. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) – San Jose 2008

The 2008 Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose marked the event’s 20th anniversary for the conference! As always, we were interested in show attendance and how exhibitors felt about floor traffic and how it met their expectation for quality leads. At best we observed an uneven flow of traffic on the show floor where some booths were crowded and others less so. What’s more important than VDC’s observations are the comments we received from a number of exhibitor meetings at the show. As you might expect, these comments ranged from satisfied to – in some cases – disappointed. VDC also recognized that some exhibitors had scaled down the size of their booths – maybe a sign of uncertain economic times – or maybe a sign of changing attitudes in the types of conferences/shows they attend and invest in – horizontally focused like ESC or vertical/industry focused.

THE “EMBEDDY” GOES TO:

Best of Show

Express Logic‘s BenchX – Express Logic has been a supplier of commercial real-time operating systems and middleware for over eleven years. Prior to this year, the company did not offer its own integrated development environment, instead relying largely on strategic alliances with other vendors to provide these tools. Express Logic’s release of the BenchX IDE marks a big step in the company’s history and rounds out their product offering by prudently leveraging open source technology. With pricing per seat expected to be in the sub-$1,000 range, the offering provides developers a less expensive solution that is adequate for the requirements of many embedded projects. The company’s ability to offer an OS-agnostic, Eclipse-based IDE, in less than 10 months effort, is a testament to the growing maturity and acceptance of open source software. For more information, please visit: http://www.rtos.com/.

Software Solution Vendors Continue to Leverage Open Source Software

Express Logic’s announcement was a reflection of a larger theme at the show where companies continue to make announcements around leveraging open source technology. Throughout the embedded market, VDC continues to observe suppliers supplementing their core offerings with Eclipse and GNU-based toolsets and open source run-time software. This trend serves as evidence of the maturity of these solutions and is also a direct long-term challenge to suppliers of commercial-grade offerings.

WALKING THE FLOOR

In addition to releasing GNATbench 2.1.0, AdaCore has enhanced its partnership with Wind River Systems with the announcement that GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for DO-178B is now fully integrated with version 2.2 of the VxWorks 653 Platform. In addition, the company also tightened the integration of its GNATbench IDE with Wind River’s Workbench.

Aonix also attended the conference and announced version 5.1 of its PERC Ultra real-time virtual machine, which includes an improved interface with PERC Pico that allows developers to address the lowest levels of hardware without using any C code. The company also announced PERC Ultra’s support of Wind River Linux and its selection by ETAS to be used in a new line of diagnostic tools.

ARM featured several announcements at the show, including enhanced support for Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS, the availability of ARM IP through Synplicity’s ReadyIP Program, and power management enhancements to its Cortex-M3 processor. ARM also announced the availability of a Parasoft Embedded plug-in for version 3.1 of its RealView Development Suite. This partnership comes only weeks after Parasoft Corporation, a test automation tool provider, officially announced the formation of the embedded systems-focused subsidiary.

Fluffy Spider Technologies (FST) participated in the “Disruption Zone” in conjunction with the release version 2.0 of its FancyPants Graphical User Interface platform. The platform’s CanvasServer allows multiple multimedia applications to run and be viewed simultaneously within a unified user interface.

Green Hills Software made several announcements at the conference, including support for AMCC PowerPC 460EX and 460GT processors and the release of its secure Device Management Solution that enables remote and in-field diagnostics, upgrades, debugging, and management of embedded software.

Static analysis tool provider GrammaTech announced at the conference that it has received a DARPA contract from the Department of Defense for the purpose of further developing its technology to examine many of the problems inherent in developing software for multi-processor systems.

ANSI C cross-compiler vendor HI-TECH Software was also in attendance promoting the Omniscient Code Generation (OCG) technology featured in its HI-TECH C PRO solution. The company reports that its OCG technology enables more intelligent code compilation by first examining all of the separate code modules for redundancies and convention inconsistencies.

IAR Systems announced that its development tools and debug probe will be included in future releases of Freescale’s MC1322x IEEE 802.15.4 Platform-in-Package (PiP) IC development kits. The company also announced that has added support for USB-enabled additions of Luminary Micro's ARM Cortex-M3-based Stellaris microcontroller family.

Static analysis tool vendor Klocwork launched the Klocwork Checker Exchange, which will enable developers to collaborate and enhance or develop their own checkers within an open community. The company has also ensured that future releases of its Insight analysis tool will remain compatible to all validated extensions developed within the Exchange community. Klocwork also announced a technology partnership with software production management solution provider Electric Cloud.

Leveraging their experience in the other safety-critical markets, LynuxWorks announced that it will be increasing its efforts to expand its business within the medical industry. The company also announced that its LynxOS-178 RTOS will support Applied Micro Circuits Corporation’s (AMCC) PowerPC 460EX and 460GT embedded processors.

Expanding its tool suite, LDRA launched TBvision, a tool that provides users with graphical representation of industry standards compliance, security vulnerabilities, and fault detection for the source code being tested.

In an effort to remove any confusion around its embedded offerings, Microsoft has reorganized and rebranded its Windows Embedded product family. Going forward, new editions of Windows XP Embedded will be titled Windows Embedded Standard, Windows Embedded CE will be titled Windows Embedded Compact, and restricted licenses of Windows Vista and Windows XP will be offered through the Windows Embedded Enterprise group. In addition, new products specific to certain device categories, including the next generation of Windows Embedded for Point of Service, will be offered through the Windows Embedded Ready division.

In order to extend its penetration into the noncommercial embedded developer community, Microsoft’s SPARK Your Imagination project will be offering versions of Windows Embedded CE and Visual Studio with select hardware to hobbyists and academia at lower price points in addition to now offering Board Support Package certification at no charge. The company also announced that it has taken additional steps in enabling internet connectivity for low-end embedded devices by included the TCP/IP stack within its .NET Micro Framework.

Embedded database vendor McObject has expanded its partnership with operating system vendor eCosCentric and is now including a royalty-free version of eXtremeDB with eCosCentric’s eCosPro software development kits. In addition, McObject recently announced eXtremeDB Kernel Mode that can map databases directly into the kernel space, allowing even faster related application performance.

Targeting systems developers incorporating sophisticated user interfaces, Mentor Graphics announced the release of a Nucleus OS-based platform solution that is optimized for Atmel AT91SAM9 ARM926EJ-S-based microcontrollers.

MIPS Technologies has launched Hot Spot Analyzer, an Eclipse plug-in that analyzes performance bottlenecks for programs on Linux-based systems on MIPS cores. Additionally, the company reports that this new profiling tool for its family of System Navigator EJTAG probes can run without causing any additional time overhead.

MontaVista Software made a number of new announcements at the show, including Linux support packages for the AMCC PowerPC 460EX and 460GT Processors, support for the Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT family of FPGAs, as well as a Mobilinux support package for the new Texas Instruments OMAP3430 Processor.

Open Kernel Labs announced the release of the OKL4 2.0 virtualization platform, which includes enhancements to the platform’s ability to create secure partitions through the company’s Secure HyperCell technology. The company also launched a community development program for OKL4 developers.

In addition to announcing support for Intel’s Atom processor, QNX revealed that its Neutrino RTOS was submitted for Common Criteria certification to the Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL4+). This evaluation for certification extends beyond the company’s basic kernel to also include its multi-core partitioning solutions.

Real-Time Innovations (RTI) was also in attendance and announced increased support for data distribution over unreliable networks through the release of RTI Data Distribution Service 4.3. The company expects that this release should serve to strengthen its positioning in many military/aerospace and other resource management application markets.

Telelogic announced version 7.2 of their Rhapsody model-driven development environment. Expanding the tool’s functionality, 7.2 features new “code respect” and model-driven testing features for C code. In addition, Telelogic announced an improved Eclipse plug-in for Rhapsody that will allow developers to view models and source code through a single integrated environment.

Virtualization solution vendor TenAsys Corporation announced the release of its new eVM virtual machine manager. Leveraging the hardware-assisted Virtualization Technology found on multi-core Intel processors (Intel VT), TenAsys reports that the eVM platform, scheduled for release in the fall of 2008, will allow Windows to run alongside the other partitioned embedded and real-time operating systems at 100% native performance.

Embedded Linux solution vendor TimeSys also attended the conference, announcing a free board support package for Atmel’s ARM9-based AT91CAP9 microcontroller as well as LinuxLink support for Xilinx’s Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs.

After announcing the release of the Eclipse-based VLX Developer v2.0 and the support for Windows environments for the VLX for Network Infrastructure product earlier in the month, VirtualLogix also unveiled its support for the Power Architecture within VLX for Network Infrastructure. (Post show news – On April 21 Motorola announced an equity investment in VirtualLogix.)

Responding to the expectation that an increasing number of embedded projects will be based on multi-core processor architecture, Virtutech recently announced that the Simics Accelerator included in Simics 4.0 speeds virtual system prototyping by allowing the simulation of several machines in parallel, across multiple host processor cores.

Wind River Systems has partnered with Sun Microsystems to deliver Workbench and Carrier Grade Linux for Sun’s UltraSPARC T2 chip multithreading processor. Wind River also announced that the nEUROn European Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) will be standardized on the company’s VxWorks 653 operating system.

The “Disruption Zone” was again a featured part of the show. Software and hardware companies showcased included: Element CXI, Fluffy Spider Technologies, NICTA Research, Open Kernel Labs, Samplify Systems, Sundance DSP, Taray, and TenAsys.

Other embedded systems software vendors in attendance at ESC included: Altium Limited, American Arium, Ashling Microsystems, BSQUARE, Carbon Design Systems, CriticalBlue, Datalight, eCosCentric, Encirq, eSOL, Freescale Semiconductor, General Software, Hitachi America, Hitex, Macraigor Systems, Micrium, National Instruments, Perforce Software, PHYTEC, Quadros Systems, RadiSys, Segger Microcontroller, Sparx Systems, Sun Microsystems, Synplicity, Target Compiler Technologies, The MathWorks, Trolltech, and many others.

It’s not just about Linux: Open Source Continues to Gain Momentum in Embedded Market

Natick, Massachusetts – April 21, 2008 – Preliminary results from VDC’s 2008 Embedded Systems Engineering Survey suggest that 23% of embedded systems engineering teams are using an open source operating system on their current development project. A growing portion of embedded engineers also expect to use an open source operating system going forward.

Linux (GNU/Linux) remains the leading choice among embedded operating system types. With more than 18% of respondents reporting its use on their current project, Linux's share is greater than any individual open source or commercial operating system type. However, other open source operating system choices are also popular among embedded engineering teams, including eCos, BSD, FreeRTOS, TinyOS, and others.

VDC continues to see higher rates of adoption of GNU and Eclipse-based tools and other open source software as well as systems manufacturers and development teams are drawn to the control, flexibility, and cost advantages that open source software can provide. In an effort to more broadly support their customers, greater numbers of solution providers are incorporating open source technology into their offerings and VDC expects over all use of open source software to continue to increase within the embedded systems engineering space. This trend will continue to present a key challenge to commercial software vendors’ employing more traditional business models, and their success over the long term will likely depend on their ability to adapt to the changing competitive landscape.

These findings are part of a larger survey of embedded system project and engineering demographics and trends. VDC's 2008 global embedded systems survey is currently available to embedded systems engineers interested in partcipating and all survey participants will gain access to a summary of VDC's 2007 prior year results and receive a summary of the 2008 survey data once it is complete.

The survey can be accessed at:
http://www.vdc-corp.com/08esdt/?RID=B

VDC also specifically explores these and other critical issues for embedded Linux software solutions within the recently released report TRACK 1: OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN EMBEDDED SYSTEMS, VOLUME 1: LINUX of VDC’s 2008 Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service.

Read VDC's New Research Brief on Embedded Operating System Virtualization at eg3.com

VDC and eg3.com recently collaborated on a research brief focused on operating system virtualization in the embedded systems industry.

You can register with eg3.com to get a free copy of this new research.

IBM/Telelogic Acquisition Update: Part 4

On April 3, Anders Lidbeck, President and CEO of Telelogic AB, announced that he will resign from his position as soon as Telelogic’s Board of Directors finds a replacement. Going forward, Mr. Lidbeck will continue to collaborate with IBM as it works to integrate Telelogic into IBM’s Rational Software group.

IBM/Telelogic Acquisition Update: Part 3

What Happened?

On March 27th, IBM announced through Watchtower AB, its indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, that 96.9% of Telelogic shareholders, corresponding to both issued and outstanding shares, have accepted the public cash offering. Watchtower AB also announced that it has extended the acceptance period until 17.00 CET on April 3, 2008 for those shareholders who have not yet accepted the offer.

VDC’s View

It is reasonable to expect that a final announcement on the acquisition will take place within the next week or so.

Stay tuned as VDC looks to comment on any additional news.

Synopsys to Acquire Synplicity

On Thursday of last week Synplicity announced that it had signed an agreement to be acquired by Synopsys for $227 million.

Kevin Morris wrote an interesting article about the merger, and its impact on engineers.

Virtutech Announces Standards Inititive for Virtualized Software Development

Just a week after Imperas's announcement regarding its new OVP Iniative (see our previous post), leading virtual software prototyping/simulation vendor Virtutech announced its own initiative to "accelerate the creation of standards for the VSD [Virtual Software Development] industry."

The company citied its involvement with Power.org and new relationships in established standards bodies including Eclipse, OSCI, the Spirit Consortium, and GreenSocs. Virtutech hopes to accomplish four goals in pursuing the iniative, including the "establishment of virtual platforms and simulation as the standard software development process for electronic systems, definition of APIs (application programming interfaces) and ABIs (application binary interfaces) to support interoperability of models from multiple vendors, creation of libraries and methodologies to support reuse across system development tasks, [and] adoption and extension of existing standards and best practices."

Enea Announces 3.0 Version of Element Middleware

What Happened?

This week Enea announced a major release of its Element middleware product for carrier grade communications systems. The 3.0 version of Element includes a number of advancements including full support for the SA Forum’s Availability Management Framework (AMF) which is a mature piece of the Application Interface Specification (AIS).

Element 3.0 also includes an in service upgrade feature that allows service providers to update software on running network elements with no hit to the service availability of the system. This type of functionality has typically been implemented in house at great cost – Enea is offering this high level of functionality within the 3.0 release.

Also in this release, Enea is integrating with its own dSPEED Platform which is a management, control and debug layer for DSP farms. Enea now offers Element services on the DSPs through an agent controlled by a host on a control processor. This approach offers control and data plane support with the same programming model.

VDC’s View

Commercial high availability middleware has existed for some time; however market interest is increasing now that ATCA has matured and hardware building blocks are available.

Telecommunication Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) are facing a number of challenges including disruptive technologies, increased global competition, and demanding customers. To meet these challenges TEMs are looking to new solutions that rely on commercial hardware and software building blocks including ATCA, Linux, HA middleware and protocols. Integrated through standard interfaces – these components offer an opportunity for reducing development time, lowering costs, narrowing risk, and fueling innovative applications through established platforms.

The real value to the TEMs is in integrated, application ready platforms – ATCA provides the hardware piece, but you can’t get there without the software.

Imperas Forms the OVP (Open Virtual Platform) Initiative

What Happened?

This week Imperas announced the release of its Open Virtual Platforms to “establish a common, open standard solution for developers to quickly and inexpensively simulate embedded software on system-on-chip (SoC) designs.”

Through the OVP Initiative, Imperas will provide what it claims to represent $4 million worth of its own R&D effort, including:

• OVPmodels - Open source model libraries of processors, components, peripherals, and templates which others are free to use, edit/update, and copy
• OVP APIs - APIs for developing models and verification infrastructure provided with no attached licensing costs
• OVPsim – A free reference simulator delivered as an executable solution (with limits on the source code availability and licensing terms)

Imperas has solicited the participation of the industry and has already gathered an impressive group of market leaders to join the initiative including IP suppliers such as MIPS, Tensilica, Denali, and notable ESL/EDA players like EVE, Forte, Carbon Design Systems, Calypto, CriticalBlue, and others. The company is still working out the details, but currently plans to manage the initiative and host the OVP community forum itself going forward.

Imperas believes that by opening up its virtual platform technology and simulation offering to the market at large, it may be possible to drive industry-standard practices around virtual platform development and help guide the market towards improved methods of software development/system simulation on complex hardware architectures. The company anticipates that by moving the market forward in this area, it can then build its business around software verification technologies, multi-core development, and other solutions complimentary to system simulation and virtual platforms. Expect more announcements from Imperas around their products at next month’s Multicore Expo.

VDC’s View

Imperas has certainly been coy about its overall product direction prior to this point, providing only small clues about its products and where it might play in terms of the overall ESL and multi-core software development space. This announcement provides a clearer sense of how the company will approach the market going forward.

There is no question that if the industry is able to agree on a set of common set of standards for building virtual platforms (what VDC has typically referred to as the virtual system prototyping/simulation market), market participants would be in a better position to collaborate with one other, leverage existing designs, and raise the overall level of productivity in creating virtual prototypes (something that is clearly needed for virtual platform methodologies to be successful in the long run). This is something that established virtual platform vendors such as Virtutech, VaST, Synopsys, CoWare, and ARM have been driving towards for some time now (though their vision of how this is to evolve is certainly different from Imperas’s particular approach in this case).

An open source model is an interesting concept here, and the early list of participants is encouraging, especially at the semiconductor IP level. Open source software has certainly changed the landscape in numerous software markets to date, and in VDC’s opinion a move toward this type of a model has the potential to alter the dynamics of the current market. The extent to which Imperas creates an environment that fits the real needs of the broader community and shares in the development and ownership of the technology is likely a key factor to its long term appeal and success. A critical next step will be to bring more parties to the table, including big EDA tools vendors, other semi IP suppliers, and the semiconductor suppliers themselves. VDC has noted a continued investment by IC suppliers in investing in product enablement through virtual platform technologies.

Imperas’s view that an established virtual platform market is the bridge to better multi-core software development and verification is likely in line with the views of many other market participants. In fact, if the company is able to propel greater industry standardization around virtual platform design and simulation, Imperas should expect increasing competition from bigger EDA companies at the software verification level.

While it is far too early to tell what impact this will have on the market, it will be certainly be interesting to gauge the reaction of other virtual platform tools providers and the rest of the market.

Richard Goering also wrote an interesting piece on this announcement earlier this week.

IBM/Telelogic Acquisition Update: Part 2

What Happened?

Ending the in-depth investigation that began on October 3, 2007, the European Union’s Competition Commission announced regulatory approval for the proposed IBM/Telelogic deal on March 5. According to the EU’s Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, "IBM's and Telelogic's modeling and requirements management products are not close substitutes, as they generally address different types of customers and different needs."

Although the deal has finally received regulatory approval, the formal merger will not conclude until at least well into the second quarter of this year. According to IBM, “Provided that Watchtower announces that the conditions of the Offer have been satisfied or waived on March 27, 2008, settlement is expected to commence approximately one week thereafter.” As a result, not only will this acquisition’s ultimate impact on the market remain unknown for some time, but IBM will delay any potential synergies or other resulting competitive advantages planned for 2007.

VDC’s View

Based on VDC’s research, the proposed merger will turn IBM/Rational’s and Telelogic/I-Logix’s market leadership in the space into a singular presence with a share of over 80% of the worldwide revenues from embedded software modeling tools. It should also be noted that these companies’ combined share of the market has remained relatively constant over the past few years, except that it was previously distributed among three vendors prior to Telelogic’s acquisition of I-Logix in March 2006.

Beyond the embedded software modeling tools space, VDC also expects that a similar market share advantages exist within the requirements management tool market, especially in regards to key industries such as military/aerospace and automotive. Although VDC believes that the success of the Rhapsody product line has fueled much of Telelogic’s recent growth, Telelogic’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions, including the DOORS requirements management tool, remain the leading source of the company’s business and were most likely one of this acquisition’s primary catalysts.

While this acquisition may leave the market without the parity that was present a few years ago, the uncertainty surrounding the future direction and embedded focus of the combined company and its tools may cause current and potential clients as well as competitors to revaluate product decisions and strategies, thus generating ample new opportunities within the market. In addition, the growing functionality and acceptance of low cost (e.g. Sparx Systems) modeling tools should continue to present adequate obstacles to any overly monopolistic behavior. As a result, this acquisition’s ultimate impact on the market will not be known for some time and raises some key questions:

• Will the sum of the parts prove to be greater than the whole?
• Will there be another “Rational Effect”?
• What long-term impact will this have on IBM's and Telelogic's customers and strategic partners?
• What other technologies might IBM look to acquire next to complement their growing embedded solution tool chain?
• Will any of IBM’s other competitors in the ALM or PLM tools market look to acquire comparable software modeling technologies?

IBM/Telelogic Acquisition Update: Part 1

On March 5th, the European Union’s Competition Commission announced regulatory approval for the proposed IBM/Telelogic deal.

Stay tuned as VDC looks to comment further on this news.

Static Analysis Demand to Drive the Market for Test Automation Tools

Software development teams continue to look toward automated testing technology as a means to improve code quality and reliability while also reducing time to market and backend debugging. Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that the demand for static analysis tools will drive growth within the market for test automation tools used in the development of embedded software.

Increasing device and project complexity, the geographic distribution of development teams, and the growing costs to OEMs from product recalls will continue to justify investment in automated testing technologies. Although dynamic test tools have traditionally generated the majority of revenue associated with the embedded test automation tool market, VDC expects revenue from static analysis tools to grow at more than three times the rate of dynamic test tool revenue. While the market for dynamic testing tools is still predicted to grow through 2009, VDC believes that much of this growth in dynamic test revenue will result from sales of solutions offer both static and dynamic functionality.

Nokia to acquire Trolltech

On January 28th, Nokia announced its intent to acquire application framework solution provider Trolltech.

Industry-Specific Requirements to Further Stimulate Adoption of Dynamic System Design Tools

Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that embedded software design methodologies will continue to shift toward model-based approaches in order to address the growing complexity associated with embedded systems development. VDC expects that evolving industry-specific requirements will further augment the adoption of design automation technologies, such as dynamic system design tools. VDC defines the dynamic system design tools market to include proprietary language-based software and system modeling tools typically intended to automate the process of designing and simulating dynamic systems and control applications that often interact with complex physical phenomena.

Beyond the desire to generate reliable, compile-ready code from higher levels of abstraction across industries, the need for such solutions specifically tailored for requirements within safety-critical markets will continue to drive the adoption of model-based design methodologies. Furthermore, as the majority of revenue within the dynamic system design tool market is generated from the heavily regulated aerospace and automotive industries, VDC expects that tools offering efficient documentation and code generation that comply with the evolving industry standards will realize a competitive advantage going forward.

“Much of this industry’s growth will be fueled by the rate at which industry standards bodies, such as automotive’s AUTOSAR, alter or append their requirements,” says Chris Rommel, Research Associate of VDC's Embedded Software Practice. “In addition, the evolution and emergence of standards within additional high-growth vertical markets, such as in the medical, telecom/datacom, and mobile phone industries, should provide added incentives for the adoption of dynamic system design tools in those industries where increasing project complexity alone is warranting further use of model-base design solutions.”

Within the Volume 6: Embedded Dynamic System Design Tools report, VDC explores these and other critical issues and offers several strategies for commercial dynamic system design tools suppliers to effectively compete in the embedded market.

Manufacturers Shipped Over 4 Billion Embedded Systems/Devices in 2006

Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) concludes that over 4 billion embedded systems/devices were shipped worldwide in 2006. According to VDC’s 2007 Embedded Systems Market Statistics report, significant growth in the number of embedded shipments is expected to continue over the coming years.

Furthermore, VDC estimates that embedded systems using no formal operating system (with no software on the device that is considered to be an operating system by the project team) or in-house developed operating systems as their primary operating system represented the majority of total embedded system shipments in 2006. Through 2009, VDC expects the number of embedded devices shipping with a commercial and/or open source operating system to grow at a faster rate than shipments of devices with an in-house/proprietary operating system or with no formal operating system.
The trend toward the use of formal third-party operating systems within today’s embedded systems projects is driving this transition. However, VDC believes that migrations in operating system selection will impact total embedded unit shipments less visibly in the shorter term, as the number of products shipping in any given year will always be heavily represented by designs from years past.

“Further complicating this analysis is the fact that embedded systems may contain one or more operating system environment and/or processor (either multiple processors or multi-cores on a single chip), offering additional opportunities for obtaining royalties on run-time environments,” says Matt Volckmann, Senior Analyst/Program Manager with VDC’s Embedded Software Practice. “The growing complexity per embedded system/device (in terms of hardware and software requirements) will therefore also impact the opportunity per unit shipped going forward for embedded system solution providers.”

In addition to providing key data on the annual shipments of embedded systems/devices, VDC’s 2007 Embedded Systems Market Statistics report also specifically addresses many other important developments and trends within the embedded systems market, and offers core statistics on the number of embedded developers and embedded development project starts. The report also includes convenient one-page summaries of end-user survey data by vertical, region, and primary processor architecture as a valuable reference source for companies interested in better understanding the embedded landscape by particular communities of interest.

Feature-Rich, Low-Cost Software Modeling Solutions Driving Adoption, Creating Pricing Pressure

Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that the availability of low-cost and free modeling tools is contributing to the growing use of standards-based modeling tools. Just as software programming evolved from the use of machine code level to more formal languages, software modeling tools allow developers to further abstract design and more easily address issues central to program’s architecture while insulated from the numerous details necessary to implement the system.

With the percentage of surveyed developers using tools typically priced below $1,000 having increased from 2006 to 2007, the growing functionality and penetration of free and low-cost modeling solutions have caused some market participants to reevaluate their strategies. According to Chris Rommel, Research Associate with VDC’s Embedded Software Practice, “The release of Aonix’s OpenAmeos into the open source community and Telelogic’s ‘Modeler,’ a free UML 2.1-based modeling tool announced in January 2007, respond to these challenges with the hope that adopting developers would eventually seek additional functionality and/or purchase other solutions from their larger tool sets.”

According to Rommel, “While this rise in functionality and affordability certainly permits a greater number of developers to experiment with UML, the level of additional functionality required by new adopters will ultimately fuel any subsequent upgrades to more sophisticated and higher-priced tools.” Furthermore, the proposed acquisition of Telelogic by IBM may cause some developers to reevaluate their current modeling solution that could further accelerate the adoption of low-cost tools.

Within the Volume V: Embedded Software and System Modeling Tools report, VDC explores these and other critical issues and offers several strategies for commercial software modeling tools suppliers to effectively compete in the embedded market.

IBM/Telelogic – Acquisition Update

What Happened?

The European Union’s Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, announced that the initial investigation of the IBM/Telelogic deal has been completed and that the merger “could have adverse effects on competition” within the market for software modeling tools. As a result the EU has begun a second phase of investigation on October 3, 2007 to further examine the merger’s possible implications on the market.

This second phase of the review process gives the Competition Commission 90 working days to complete its examination, meaning clearance of the merger might not occur until February 20, 2008. In addition, if the Commission deems it necessary, a decision can be delayed an additional 35 working days, potentially pushing their judgment back until at least April 9, 2008!

In response to this announcement, IBM’s wholly-owned Swedish subsidiary, Watchtower AB, extended the acceptance period in regards to its cash tender offer to Telelogic share holders for the second time since originally declaring their intent to acquire Telelogic. Originally extended to October 9, the acceptance period’s deadline has now been set for 17:00 CET (11:00 EST) on December 7, 2007.

VDC’s View

VDC wonders if Watchtower’s date, well before that set by the EU, may help IBM to encourage a decision by the EU within the 2007 calendar year. Based on VDC’s market research, Telelogic’s 2006 acquisition of I-Logix has left IBM and Telelogic as the leading vendors of software modeling tools in the embedded market. While the merger completed and passed the antitrust review process in the United States, VDC believes that the EU Competition Commission’s decision may rest on IBM’s ultimate plans for the two companies’ competing offerings and the fate of Telelogic’s 1,100+ worldwide employees, 41% of whom are based in the EU.

To read additional articles on the IBM/Telelogic acquisition click here or here

Embedded Systems Manufacturer Indicate Future Commitment to the Linux Operating System

Natick, Massachusetts – October 3, 2007 – Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that a significant portion of embedded software and systems engineering teams continue to adopt Linux as their primary target operating system. Furthermore, the research also suggests that this migration may be lasting, as the majority of current Linux users surveyed plan to use Linux again as their primary operating system on future projects.

Linux remains an attractive operating system choice for a range of embedded development teams for a number of reasons, including: royalty free run-time costs, advanced networking capabilities and technical features, the large base of engineers familiar with the Linux operating system, as well as many other factors. These and other findings from VDC’s Linux in the Embedded Systems Market report continue to suggest that Linux will remain one of the leading operating system choices into the future.

Linux has proven itself to be well suited for a wide range of applications across various industries, and continues to gain market share, despite not being particularly well matched for certain embedded applications types,” according to Matt Volckmann, Senior Analyst/Program Manager with VDC’s Embedded Software Practice. “Changes in the way that systems are designed will also allow Linux to continue to penetrate into segments of the market where the lack of capability was previously perceived as a barrier.”

A more complex question is how opportunities for commercial solution suppliers will progress given the promise of more widespread Linux adoption in the embedded market. Currently, a majority of Linux projects do not obtain their Linux distributions from commercial suppliers. However, innovation within embedded Linux to date has relied heavily on support from commercial suppliers like MontaVista and others to make Linux a more viable operating system option within the embedded market. “At the root of most of the challenges faced by commercial suppliers is the question of how to bring significant additional value to an operating system that is freely available, continually improving, increasingly supported by embedded system/component suppliers, and in demand from companies interested in decreasing their overall development costs and/or bill of materials,” says Volckmann.

While Linux has found its way into a number of embedded industries, one of the key opportunities for Linux over the next several years will be in the mobile phone market, where Linux is quickly becoming a leading application operating system, and manufacturers and telecom operators are rallying to drive more comprehensive, industry-specific Linux-based standards. VDC’s Linux in the Embedded Systems Market report, released in September 2007, explores these and other critical issues within the embedded Linux market.

For access to the full article, click here.

Embedded Systems Bulletin – September 2007

VDC attended the 2007 Embedded Systems Conference in Boston last week. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

Embedded Systems Conference – Boston 2007

The ESC Boston event certainly seemed to draw a crowd of interested engineers, as exhibitors we spoke with generally expressed a level of satisfaction with show-floor booth traffic; however, some expressed dissatisfaction with the later opening of exhibit floor hours on Wednesday at 2PM rather than earlier in the day. This year’s TechMash 2007 combined the Embedded Systems Conference, Software Development Best Practices, and RFID World, in an effort to expand the level of attendee participation and collaboration amongst these technology areas. CMP officials confirmed preliminary figures suggested an increase in attendance of about 14% from last year’s ESC show.

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

National Instruments – LabVIEW 8.5 – Officially announced in August 2007 at the NI Week event, NI’s new version of its LabVIEW product offering provides a number of new additions and further extends the company expanding capabilities in the embedded systems development space. LabVIEW 8.5 includes graphical user interfaces for parallel dataflow modeling, a statechart design module, as well as a number of other advancements. VDC believes that the company’s flexible set of system development solutions, which also include LabVIEW Real-Time and a new trace toolkit, will continue to draw interest from embedded development teams looking to rapidly build, optimize, and debug designs based on increasingly complex multi-core hardware environments. For more information, visit www.ni.com.

Best Giveaway

GrammaTech offered exhibit attendees the opportunity to do some manual bug fixing without the help of an automated solution. At their booth, the company displayed a board of source code and any engineers able to identify a bug in the code won a free t-shirt. VDC gives points to the company for developing a product-related challenge that also doubled as a fun giveaway.

WALKING THE FLOOR

Continuing to expand their toolset to address the application layer, Mentor Graphics announced a new Multimedia Feature Pack for their Application-Ready Platform, which includes the Inflexion and the Platform UI graphical user interface product for the Nucleus operating system. The Multimedia Feature Pack implements the new OpenMAX industry standard API, which has wide industry support on a range of silicon platforms and operating systems.

Microsoft featured a subset of new technologies that will be included in the next release of the Windows Embedded CE product (6.0 R2) as well as showcased Windows Embedded Partners in the booth including PHYTEC, Adeno, ICOP Technology, Avnet, and Cogent Computer Systems. In addition, Microsoft Windows Embedded General Manager, Kevin Dallas, delivered a keynote address at the conference outlining Microsoft’s Windows Embedded vision for powering smart, connected, service-oriented devices.

LynuxWorks featured announcements that continue stress the company theme of open standards as key to the selection of LynxOS by Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems for the Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS) across a number of U.S. Navy ships and a working relationship with TTTech Computertechnik AG in offering a combination of products including LynxOS and TTTech’s TTP (Time Triggered Protocol) for flight safety-critical avionics systems.

Green Hills Software made several announcements at the show, including: velOSity support for Renesas SH726x and Super H RISC microcontrollers, INTEGRITY PC support for Intel’s vPro processor technology, enhancements to the company’s Platform for Secure Wireless Devices, and a yet-to-be-named RTOS that is ThreadX compatible. As usual, the Green Hills booth continued to draw substantial crowds throughout the event.

Quadros Systems continues to build on the RTXC foundation with the announcement and availability of their graphical productivity design tool, VisualRTXC, for embedded applications based on the RTXC Quadros RTOS.

QNX Software Systems participated in the disruption zone and affirmed their recent announcement regarding the company’s decision to publish the Neutrino Source Code as part of an open development process. They also announced at the conference that source code for its symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) capabilities was also made available as part of the QNX Neutrino source code repository.

RadiSys featured two demonstrations in the Intel booth as Intel Innovation contest finalists with their integrated Intel Core Duo solutions and RadiSys COM Express (Procelerant CE945GN) and mini-ITX (Endura TP945GM) products in a Robotics and Medical applications. Both demonstrations featured RadiSys’s OS-9 RTOS and Linux running in separate partitions on top of VirtuaLogix’s VLX platform. In addition the company featured their Eclipse-based Microware OS-9 Multi-Core Development kit.

Express Logic announced the availability of its first host-based development tool TraceX with immediate support for use on Windows-based hosts and all target architectures supported by TreadX. The company also announced ThreadX and NetX support for Luminary Micro’s new Stellaris LM3S1000 and LM3S8000 series ARM Cortex M3-based microcontrollers with support for ARM/Keil’s RealView IDE from ARM as well as ThreadX support for Renesas SH-2A microcontrollers.

AdaCore featured several announcements at the conference, including: the GNAT stack, a static analysis tool for safety-critical applications; the GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for Servers; and the deployment of a mission-critical system for the U.S. Air Force T25 Simulator for the Electronic Combat Training (SECT) system using the GNAT Pro development environment.

Aonix announced a joint seminar series on “Trends in Critical Systems” that will run from October 16 through December 6 at various locations within the U.S. and include presentations from Wind River Systems, Objective Interface Systems, and Verocel in addition to Aonix. The company also announced PERC support for Freescale’s i.MX31 processor and MontaVista Mobilinux and ObjectAda RAVEN support for Wind River Systems VxWorks 653 environment for PowerPC.

Electing to take a “business-as-usual” approach ahead of the anticipated acquisition by IBM later this year, Telelogic continued to strongly promote its products at the show. The company highlighted its flexible Architecture Design and Integration Framework within the Rhapsody product line that allows for the integration of multiple design and application lifecycle packages including DOORS, Simulink, Statemate, SDL Suite, and other custom tools.

After releasing Enterprise Architect 7.0 in August of this year, Sparx Systems announced a number of enhancements with Build 817 of EA 7.0 that includes improvements in model load time, in the auditing SQL construction, and in the behavior of their reverse engineering option.

ARM featured recent announcements including the ARM Cortex-M1 Development Kit for the Altera Cyclone III FPGAs and the company’s investment in Embest Info & Tech as ARM’s first joint venture in China.

IAR Systems announced added support within IAR Embedded Workbench for Luminary Micro’s Stellaris microcontroller family based on the ARM Cortex-M3. The company also released an evaluation environment kit for the STM32 family of 32-bit MCUs.

Test automation technologies certainly continued to be a hot topic at the show. Static code analysis supplier GrammaTech announced the release of CodeSonar Enterprise. In addition to improved accuracy, faster execution, and support for additional embedded compilers, the new product allows distributed development teams to track and manage defects through a Web-based interface.

Also within the static analysis domain, a technical session hosted by Coverity drew substantial attention from engineers and industry participants alike. Meanwhile, Parasoft announced extended support for its C/C++ solution including the new static analysis capability in Parasoft C++test that offers developers the capability to identify runtime errors with running the application. LDRA and The MathWorks (formerly PolySpace) were also visible promoting the value of their popular test suites.

On the ESL front, both Virtutech and Carbon Design Systems were in attendance in an effort to reach out to the software engineering community. VDC has continued to see players in the virtual system prototyping space more directly target software and systems engineering teams in an effort to get to the key beneficiaries of their technologies.

In addition to showing off the newest version of LabVIEW just released last month (see above), National Instruments released a new RF vector signal generator product and celebrated the 10th anniversary of the PXI Alliance, of which NI is a sponsor member.

Advanced graphics/simulation hardware suppler and maker of iData HMI software, Quantum 3D, announced two new PCI Cards within the Sentiris 4110 series for advanced video capture and display. In speaking with VDC, the company also described some of the interesting partitioned HMI designs they had worked on based on collaboration with SYSGO AG’s partitioned Pike OS product.

AMD made a number of new announcements at the event, including the release of three Athlon 64 processors for low power embedded systems and the release of a triple-core product for the desktop market. The company also revealed a partnership with Freescale semiconductor to license its graphics technology, citing growing demand in the wireless market.

Datalight featured recent announcements regarding the company’s approved patent for their file system technology, Datalight Reliance, as well as the improved performance on Windows CE 6.0 when Datalight Reliance and FlashFX Pro are implemented together.

On the embedded database front, the Embedded Business Group (EBG) of Hitachi America was also in attendance, promoting new enhancements to their Entier Embedded RDBMS database solution. The release of Entier 2.2 includes improvements around multitasking, database content updating, and complex word searching.

McObject featured recent announcements for eXtremeDB support for the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) application programming interface (API) and tested compatibility with MontaVista Software’s Linux Carrier Grade Edition 4.0.

Professional services provider Embedded Systems Design was showcasing some of their custom-built advanced embedded computing systems. As examples of their core competence in the embedded space, the company has assembled embedded systems based on Xilinx FPGAs for advanced networking and communication.

Within the collocated SD Best Practices show floor were a number of lifecycle management focused companies, including AccuRev, Change Vision, IBM, Telelogic, Seapine Software, and many others. VDC stopped by the TechExcel booth to check out the latest versions of their various ALM-oriented solutions that have been adopted by many leading embedded systems companies.

The “Disruption Zone” was again a featured part of the show. Software and hardware companies showcased included: Amphenol TCS, Handshake Solutions, Lattix, National Instruments, Nilar, and QNX Software.

Other vendors in attendance at ESC included American Arium, Atmel, Black Duck Software, CMX Systems, CodeSourcery, Intel, KLOCwork, Lantronix, MKS, NXP, Perforce, Lauterbach, Texas Instruments, Trolltech, IBM, Seapine Software, STMicro and many others.

ABOUT VDC

The Embedded Systems Industry Bulletin is published as part of VDC’s Embedded Software Strategic Market Intelligence Program. VDC has been providing embedded systems market intelligence for over 20 years. Published by Venture Development Corporation, Copyright 2007, all rights reserved.


Editors:

Steve Balacco
Matt Volckmann
Chris Rommel

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