Embedded Systems Bulletin – September 2009

Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) – Boston 2009

VDC attended the 2009 Embedded Systems Conference in Boston on September 22nd and 23rd and held face-to-face meetings at the conference with over 20 exhibitors.

Conference organizers reported that registration and attendance at the show are up year over year. The Boston conference has changed in so many ways over the last several years as some exhibitors have opted to invest in and attend the San Jose conference in lieu of Boston, in addition to focusing on industry specific events. This, in combination with the current economic climate, has resulted in shrinking floor space and scaling back of the size of exhibitor booths at the Boston conference.

While expectations of many of these exhibitors were mixed going into the show, many indicated that they were pleased with floor traffic and had generated a number of quality leads. And yes, most exhibitors we spoke with had some level of anxiety going into the show, however, most were pleased with the end result on show traffic and with the quality of leads.
Security, safety, reliability, multi-core, virtualization, and test engineering continue to be strong themes among the exhibitors.

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

VDC awarded our “Embeddie” best of show live on the conference floor to Enea for their OSE Multicore Edition announcement. The solution, available now, offers development organizations the simplicity of the Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) model with the performance of Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP), scalability across cores, and a migration path for legacy applications. The company also announced a new focused strategy with two business units, Software and Consulting. The Software business unit, which includes Enea's global software business and related services, will focus on the company's position in the real-time operating system (RTOS) market. The Consulting business unit, which consists of the professional services business in Sweden, Romania and the United States, focus on local expertise combined with off-shoring services.

Honorable Mention

Microsoft released a series of announcements at the show around Windows 7 technologies and connectivity, including:

• Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3, the next-generation platform of the componentized, real-time Windows Embedded CE operating system which includes the Silverlight for Windows Embedded user interface (UI) framework. This assists original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in delivering devices with immersive user experiences, animated UIs and seamless connections to Windows 7-based PCs, servers and online services.
  
• Initial rollout of Windows 7 technologies for Windows Embedded Enterprise and Windows Embedded Server for specialized devices with connectivity to Windows-based PCs, servers and online services. These releases offer technology refresh and alignment with Windows 7 technologies to the embedded community in next-generation devices and to the established Windows ecosystem.”

Best Demos

ARM, together with NXP, announced and demonstrated mbed, an online platform for rapid prototyping microcontroller-based systems. The mbed platform is intended to enable the creation of low risk, proof-of-concept designs so that engineers can explore the functionality and potential cost saving opportunities presented through the use of an advanced microcontroller in the system. The first mbed microcontroller hardware package is based on a NXP Cortex-M3 processor-based MCU and includes C/C++ libraries to provide high-level interfaces to microcontroller peripherals

Cypress Semiconductor briefed and demonstrated their PSoC Creator Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the new PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families. The unique new design software enables engineers to design the way they think, using schematic-based design capture along with certified, pre-packaged peripherals to keep system creation independent of the target PSoC device.

WALKING THE FLOOR

AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada development tools and support services, announced the release of the GNAT Pro Ada development environment for the LynuxWorks LynxOS 5.0 operating system. This release allows GNAT Pro users to develop applications for both LynxOS 4.x and 5.0, and also provides a smooth migration path from older versions of the operating system to LynxOS 5.0. GNAT Pro for LynxOS 5.0 is available for both Linux and Windows host platforms, and for both PowerPC and x86 embedded targets.

Certicom briefed VDC on their new Asset Management System, a comprehensive infrastructure solution designed to help semiconductor companies manage, secure and control manufacturing processes in a global, outsourced manufacturing environment. Some of these processes include timely, secure and reliable capture and reporting of multi-point yield data, virtual SKUing, secure key injection and anti-counterfeit protection.

Real-time Operating System vendor ExpressLogic announced the integration of Real-Time Logic’s popular Barracuda Embedded Web Server with Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS and NetX TCP/IP Stack. Optimized for the embedded market, the joint technologies form a small footprint solution ideal for the remote connected devices needed in medical, industrial, military and consumer applications.

Static analysis tool vendor GrammaTech announced that the next version of CodeSonar will support the secure coding rules developed by US-CERT. The coding standard provides secure coding rules and recommendations, which reduce insecure coding practices that can create vulnerabilities. CodeSonar's automated analysis will review code and quickly identify problematic sections of code that violate US-CERT secure coding guidelines. CodeSonar's automated enforcement will reduce the need for manual review, making it easier for organizations to adopt the coding standard.

Green Hills Software made several announcements at the conference including:

• A 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 INTEGRITY Secure Virtualization (ISV), supports hosting of Windows, Linux, VxWorks and other general purpose operating systems in secure virtual containers on ARM, Intel, Power and other processor architectures.
  
• Green Hills Probe support for Intel architecture to include the Intel Atom, Intel Core 2 Duo, and Intel Core i7.
  
• A new Networking Solutions Center based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Solutions Center is staffed by a team of engineering veterans dedicated to advancing network protocol technology, industry protocol collaboration, and network security.

IBM Rational was also in attendance, highlighting some of the advanced features in Rational Quality Manager and the Systems Engineering Toolkit from this year’s release of Rhapsody 7.5. In addition, IBM also highlighted at the show how developers can use Rational Rhapsody to help create applications for the Open Handset Alliance’s Android mobile platform.

Lantronix briefed VDC on their XPort and WiPort embedded networking servers. The implementation of Lantronix wired and wireless connectivity solutions eliminate design complexity by providing self-contained embedded networking systems.

LDRA announced a new security-critical development and certification solution to ensure that the LDRA tool suite can meet today’s growing demand for security-critical software. LDRA has extended its implementation of the CERT C secure coding standard to also meet Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) and new Homeland Security criteria for security-critical software development. Recognizing that static analysis does not expose all software security vulnerabilities, LDRA has integrated this solution into its entire tool suite from analysis through test and requirements traceability.

LynuxWorks announced the release of LynxSecure 3.1, the newest version of its next generation separation kernel and embedded hypervisor. This update to LynxSecure takes advantage of new technologies, including guest operating support for the latest Microsoft Windows and the latest Intel Core2 Duo systems.

Programming Research (PRQA) announced the availability of a DO-178B Qualification Pack for QA·C++, its high fidelity language analysis tool. The QA·C++ Qualification Pack includes Tool Operational Requirements (TOR), Tool Qualification Data (TQD), and Tool Qualification Plan (TQP) documents, along with a user-activated Certification Report to provide users with automated project-based artifact documentation.

Real-Time Innovations (RTI) announced the release of RTI Routing Service, which dramatically eases the scaling and integration of real-time systems across Wide Area Networks (WANs) and Systems of Systems. RTI Routing Service enables seamless communication between applications deployed in different locations or even applications supporting different external interfaces—without any changes to existing software.

Other leading embedded systems vendors in attendance at ESC/Boston included AMD, aicas, Arium, Altera, Birdstep Technology, Black Duck Software, Bluespec, BSQUARE, Coverity, Datalight, eCosCentric, Electric Cloud, IAR Systems Software, Klocwork, Lauterbach, The MathWorks, McObject, Nokia, Perforce Software, RadiSys, Segger Microcontroller, Synopsys, Texas Instruments, Vast Systems, and many others.

The 2009 Embedded Systems Conference Boston is Fast Approaching

When: September 21 – 24, 2009

Where: Hynes Convention Center, Boston

Click here for more information and registration for the event!

VDC Research will once again be attending the conference and meeting with exhibitors at the show. VDC will be presenting their annual “Embeddie” awards for best in show on the show floor at ESC Boston 2009 and would like all exhibitors who are announcing or demonstrating significant new software or hardware products to have the chance to submit themselves for consideration. This year VDC will be announcing a best of show for both software and hardware. To be considered you MUST do one of two things:

Make an appointment (slots filling up fast!) by September 18 to meet at the show with either:

• Stephen Balacco, Director, Embedded Software & Tools Practice, VDC Research Group by contacting Stephen at: sbalacco@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x 124 for software related announcements or;


• Eric Heikkila, Director, Embedded Hardware and Systems Practice, VDC Research Group by contacting Eric directly at erich@vdcresearch.com or 310.393.9086 for hardware related announcements.

OR

Submit your company information here!

VDC looks forward to meeting with you at the conference and stay tuned for more information on the Embeddie award ceremony.

Embedded Systems Bulletin – April 2009

VDC attended the 2009 Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose on March 31st and April 1st. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) – Silicon Valley 2009

Despite this year’s murky global economic outlook, the 20th Embedded System Conference appeared to be moderately well attended on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a substantial number of exhibitors, fair floor traffic, and a cautiously optimistic murmur emanating from activities on the floor. As result of the weaker economy, few of the vendors we spoke to had expected the conference to offer a large attendance or significant new business opportunities, yet many indicated that they had generated a surprising percentage of quality leads as a result.

Multi-core, virtualization, and security continued to be strong themes among software solution providers. VDC also noted the substantial amount of positioning around test engineering and lifecycle management solutions among the exhibitors.

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

CriticalBlue announced Prism, a new analysis tool for multi-core programming. Prism allows software developers to analyze legacy serial code bases for concurrency opportunities and also enables them to test for the most efficient parallel configurations, thus limiting some of the risk and time associated with adopting new multi-core hardware architectures and programming methodologies, In times when there is continuing interest and movement to multi-core architectures and available engineering resources are even more critical to successful product development, the value proposition of tools such as Prism appears even more compelling.

Honorable Mention

QNX Software Systems announced that its Neutrino RTOS Secure Kernel v6.4.0 has been certified to the Common Criteria ISO/IEC 15408 Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+). This marks the first such certification of an RTOS that implements symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and bound multiprocessing (SMP with application processor affinity). The company also announced that it will extend Neutrino’s multi-core solution to support the Intel Xeon processor 5500 (Nehalem) series in an effort to better target next generation networking devices.

Best Demos

Freescale’s booth drew a consistent crowd with its AC Flexis air hockey table that allowed attendees to compete against a robot-arm-controlled competitor built by Nuvation. The system combined a vision system and robotic arm controlled by a combination of Freescale’s 8-bit MC9S08AC128 and 32-bit ColdFire MCF51AC256 products. Though beatable, the system proved to be a remarkably skilled opponent.

Showcasing its NI Compact Vision System, National Instruments exhibited its NI Guitar Hero Challenge. Attendees could face-off against the Cythbot, a robot built by Cynth Systems capable of skillfully playing the popular video game. While the use of Guitar Hero to draw a crowd is by no means unique (VDC saw at least two others offering game play at this show alone), NI’s exhibit proved to be an interesting twist on the theme while elegantly demonstrated the utility of its products.

WALKING THE FLOOR

With 10 product-related announcements in the month on March alone, Atmel Corporation had plenty to talk about at this year’s conference. The company’s most recent announcements included the introduction of a new family of 0.7V tinyAVR microcontrollers, new products targeting the mobile device market with its AT42QT1040 is based on Atmel's patented QTouch charge-transfer sensing method, and the launch of new solutions around the AVR32 product line supporting digital audio streaming and playback. Surprisingly, the company also hinted that more important announcements would be on the way.

ARM also attended the conference and featured a number of new announcements. The company announced the expansion of its System Generator product with the introduction of two new fast models for the Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor and for the Cortex-M3 processor. ARM also announced the Keil Microcontroller Prototyping System (MPS), in which ARM Cortex-M class processors and user-defined peripherals can be prototyped and more easily evaluated. Keil MPS allows the silicon manufacturers to implement a Cortex-M system without needing access to the RTL code. Moreover, since the system is fully configured, the integration and development of additional IP and software can begin sooner.

After having announced their initial partnership last year, AdaCore and Praxis launched SPARK Pro, which combines the SPARK language and tool set within AdaCore’s GNAT Programming Studio IDE. AdaCore also announced that GNAT Pro now supports the Atmel VR 8-bit microcontroller and launched a GNAT-on-MINDSTORMS product to support the LEGO robotic building system as part of their GNAT Academic Program.

Real-time Operating System vendor ExpressLogic announced the latest addition to its growing suite of development tools, StackX. This interesting new offering analyzes a program’s executable (.elf) file, enabling the calculation of each thread’s maximum stack memory requirements, therefore reducing the use of unneeded memory, and solving a critical challenge for developers in determining the appropriate stack size. In addition, the company also released version 5 of its TraceX product, which includes deterministic and undeterministic priority inversions, advanced search facilities, and enhanced integrations with their FileX and NetX solutions.

Green Hills Software announced that their Platform for Secure Networking now supports the RADVISION SIP protocol development suite for Voice and Video over IP solutions. In addition, Green Hills has added virtualization to that platform, allowing Linux to run on the same processor in secure isolation from application functions designated to run on the company’s INTEGRITY real-time operating system. The company also announced that Datamax-O’Neil is using INTEGRITY within its microFlash 2te serial and wireless portable thermal printers. Green Hills Software also announced that they achieved record sales and earnings in 2008.

Static analysis tool vendor GrammaTech announced that version 3.4 of their Code Sonar tool - due to be released later this quarter - will incorporate checks compliant with the Power of 10 coding rules for developing safety-critical code created by Gerard Holzmann, director of NASA/JPL's Laboratory for Reliable Software.

The Rational Software team from IBM was also in attendance and highlighted enhancements to its Telelogic Rhapsody software and system modeling tool for developing applications for the Android platform and for the efficient development of applications for multi-core processors.

LDRA announced version 8.0 of their automated test tool suite, which incorporates requirements management, static analysis, dynamic analysis, unit- and system-level test tools. The new release includes speed improvements and enhanced requirements traceability, an advancement that should prove valuable among organizations with highly requirements-driven engineering methodologies.

With the launch of LynxSecure 3.0, LynuxWorks will add full virtualization capabilities to its hypervisor solution. These full virtualization capabilities are initially available for Windows operating systems when implemented in conjunction with Intel VT-x and VT-d hardware virtualization technology. In addition, the company also announced that its secure separation kernel had been selected for incorporation as part of the Navy’s $83 million Open Architecture Computing Environment project.

In addition to their recently announced DO-178B solution, static analysis tool vendor Klocwork highlighted Klocwork Solo. Offering a limited-time subscription pricing of only $99 per user, the company is hoping to enhance adoption of their solutions virally, via individual developers, at a time when higher priced licenses for new tools are likely harder to justify. Available for Java, Solo also includes functionality specifically tailored for code developed for the Android platform.

Embedded database vendor McObject announced a partnership with LynuxWorks in which its eXtremeDB Kernel Mode database has been ported to LynuxWorks’ BlueCat Embedded Linux 5.6 operating system. The companies expect that this partnership will be especially beneficial when targeting the medical device industry, in which many OEMs are moving away from proprietary systems toward Linux and other off-the-shelf solutions.

Mentor Graphics did not feature any specifically announcements at the show and the company’s name was noticeably absent from its exhibit in favor of the name of its flagship operating system - Nucleus. VDC expects that this branding strategy likely signifies the strength of the Nucleus name in embedded and a deliberate focus on the part of Mentor to draw upon the core technologies that helped establish Mentor (and Accelerated Technology Incorporated) within the embedded software marketplace.

Programming Research (PRQA) announced Management Information System (MIS), a new product designed to articulate metric trending and summaries to development managers. The solution provides the ability to create custom metrics as well as the ability to limit unneeded noise by ignoring the diagnostics for sections of legacy code..

Virtualization solution provider Open Kernel Labs was also in attendance and announced that the new Motorola eVoke phone employed their OKL4 software to perform both application and baseband processing on the same processing core. VDC expects that a number of mobile phone manufacturers will be closely tracking the success of the eVoke product, and assess for themselves whether virtualization can help them to offer an enhanced user experience while reducing their hardware bill of material costs in future products.

National Instruments announced a new programming interface for LabVIEW that eases the ability of C/C++ software developers to program NI FPGAs-based hardware. The NI LabVIEW FPGA module abstracts the communication between the FPGA and the general purpose processor so that software developers can avoid using VHDL.

Microsoft featured announcements around its Windows Embedded product line, including the launch of Windows Embedded Server and MSDN Embedded and Windows Embedded Developer Update, a consolidated subscription offering to access the portfolio of Microsoft’s embedded operating systems and tools. The Update service includes access to drivers, BSPs, and other technologies from Microsoft’s partners.

Embedded Linux solution vendor MontaVista Software highlighted several of their recent announcements at the show, including the launch of their embedded Linux developer community, MELD, and their Montabello platform for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). An extension of their Mobilinux platform, Montabello includes middleware and applications for power management, fast boot, and connectivity management.

Lantronix’s announced the first step in their plan to migrate their secure, embedded networking solutions to Linux as their base platform with the release of their new MatchPort AR Software Development Kit. The move underscores the industry’s shift to more powerful processing platforms away from the 16 bit architectures for which the company’s Evolution OS had been designed.

Phoenix Technologies demonstrated the new version of their Firmbase environment, which allows firmware-based applications to run at high availability, outside the main operating system. The company offers a quick start Embedded BIOS and HyperSpace, an always connected, instant-on operating environment that can run independently or alongside Windows as a virtualization solution.

Real-Time Innovations (RTI) version 4.4 of their Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware, that includes the ability to dynamically update communication interfaces at runtime as well as enhanced integration with XML-based applications. The company also noted OGM’s recent successful demonstration of the integration of DDS implementations among multiple vendors. RTI also announced that they have integrated their DDS product with Wind River's VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0, and strengthened their partnership with Aonix in the process in order to better serve their joint customers going forward.

Virtutech announced the release of Simics 4.2. The new product offers a number of enhancements, including faster performance for complex distributed systems, improved extensibility, more robust support for key industry standards such as Eclipse, System C, and IP-XACT, support for ENEA’s OSE operating system, features for hierarchical system model representation, and the enablement of hybrid (functional vs. cycle accurate) model simulation.

Other leading embedded systems vendors in attendance at ESC included American Arium, Altera, Black Duck Software, Birdstep Technology, BSQUARE, CMX Systems, Coverity, Datalight, Electric Cloud, IAR Systems, Lauterbach, Perforce Software, QualiSystems, Segger Microcontroller, Synopsys, Texas Instruments, Wind River Systems, and many others.

If you would like to view a PDF file of this bulletin, go to:

http://www.vdcresearch.com/_documents/pressrelease/press-attachment-1507.pdf

Embedded Systems Bulletin - October 2008

VDC attended the 2008 Embedded Systems Conference in Boston on October 28 and 29. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) – Boston 2008

In these times of economic uncertainty, the fifteenth installment of the East Coast’s Embedded System Conference exceeded our expectations. Although some prominent embedded vendors did not participate in the show and many exhibitors seemed to have scaled down booth size and staff, show floor attendance did not drop off as much we might have expected. In fact, attendance on Tuesday in particular seemed fairly comparable to last year in Boston. Discussions with exhibiting vendors also suggested that the number of quality leads generated by attendees seemed promising as well as consistent year-over-year.

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

GrammaTech’s CodeSonar 3.3 – Static analysis tool vendor GrammaTech announced that CodeSonar 3.3 is up to five times faster than previous versions. The company also announced that it has improved the reporting and charting abilities in addition to adding a richer API in order to enhance the user’s ability to customize tests and reports. We expect that these announcements should help GrammaTech, whose solutions have traditionally been used in the development of safety- or mission-critical applications, strengthen its value proposition to those markets outside of its traditional domain.

Honorable Mentions

BSQUARE’s 3G Dev Kit – BSQUARE launched a 3G wireless development kit for Texas Instrument’s OMAP35x to aid the integration and development of hardware and software, which should allow teams to focus more of their time and efforts above the cell core on the application level. BSQUARE also announced a Flash UI Extender that facilitates the use of Flash to build user interfaces for Windows CE 5 or Windows Mobile 6.

Green Hills Software’s Platform for Secure Wireless Devices – GHS has enhanced its Platform for Secure Wireless Devices with the latest 802.11A/B/G wireless drivers from Atheros Communications as wells as new Devicescape security supplicants. The company anticipates that these improvements – as well as the growing importance of security for mobile devices – will help fuel future design wins for the mobile phone space. GHS also announced that Saab is using INTEGRITY, MULTI and the Green Hills Probe for the development of its Skeldar Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

Open Kernel Labs’ OKL4 3.0/Nano – Virtualization solution vendor Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) announced version 3.0 of its OKL4 embedded hypervisor. With their solution primarily targeted at the mobile phone industry, the company has also released a configuration of OKL4 3.0, dubbed OKL4 Nano that is streamlined for use on low-end phones that lack the memory or processing power to run a full version of OKL4. Not only does this solution allow them to target the more rapidly expanding low-end mobile market, but it is also configured to ensure that applications developed to run on Nano will be completely compatible with the full version.

Best Giveaway

Microsoft Windows Embedded Computer – At the conference’s industry address, presented by Kevin Dallas, Microsoft provided the first 300 attendees with a VIA Artigo Pico-ITX kit (due to the lecture’s high turn out, Microsoft announced that they would ship additional systems if needed), loaded with 1 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, Visual Studio Pro 2005, as well as configured dual boot either Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 or a 1200day evaluation copy of Windows Embedded Standard. With these systems retailing for approximately $1,400, Microsoft continues to demonstrate its unrelenting drive to bolster its embedded presence.


Software Vendors Target Mobile Devices for Next-Generation Solutions


Mobile devices continue to generate a growing portion of consumers’ interaction with technology. The number of development solutions targeted at these sophisticated mobile devices has increased in conjunction with the versatility and level of functionality within these previously resource-constrained and dedicated devices. We expect that this class of devices – from low-end phones to PC-like smartphones –will increasingly drive the future of the embedded market, both from the level of functionality expected by consumers as well as the sheer volumes of device shipments.

WALKING THE FLOOR

AdaCore featured several announcements at the show, including the availability of GNAT Pro for SYSGO’s ElinOS embedded Linux operating system, support for Mentor Graphics’ NucleusOS, as wells as a strategic partnership with Praxis, the developer of the Ada-based SPARK language and related toolset.

Aonix announced a new release of its PERC Ultra virtual machine and toolset for the development of Java-based, symmetric multiprocessing systems. In addition, the company also announced that the PERC Ultra SMP tool will support Concurrent’s RedHawk Linux and NightStar debugging and analysis tools.

Software production management tool vendor Electric Cloud also attended the Conference and announced version 3.0 of its ElectricCommander tool. The highlighted improvements featured an Eclipse integration intended to aid agile development and promote best practices that could speed development.

Real-time Operating System (RTOS) vendor Express Logic announced that the availability of its ThreadX RTOS on a simulated Renasas SH-4A platform created with Virtutech’s Simics. We expect this integration, as well as the use of other virtual system prototyping/simulation solutions, should help engineering teams begin application development sooner, potentially speeding time-to-market.

IAR Systems also attended the conference and launched a version of its IAR Embedded Workbench IDE for Atmel’s AVR32 Version 3.10.

Klocwork announced that C# source code analysis capabilities have now been added to its Klocwork Insight static analysis tool.

After having launched TBvision at ESC West, LDRA released TBsecure, a plug-in for that checks compliance with the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT C secure coding standard. In addition, the company also announced that its TBrun unit test tool will now be available as a stand-alone product.

Mentor Graphics announced the availability of a customizable reference platform for the design of multimedia applications called the Nucleus Platform Media Player. The solution includes the Nucleus operating system, a user interface engine, and a suite of development tools.

MicroChip announced the next generation of their MPLAB In-Circuit Debugger (ICD). The company states the MPLAB ICD3 can operate 15 times faster than its predecessor and will better enable rapid program development for its entire 8/16/32-bit microcontroller portfolio.

At the Conference’s keynote, Kevin Dallas, General Manager of Windows Embedded, discussed Microsoft’s plans to build “Quebec,” the next generation of Windows Embedded Standard (XP), on Windows 7.0 and include further enhancements for connected, service-oriented devices.

Microsoft also announced the SPARKs Will Fly contest. Based on the SPARK Your Imagination program announced at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose in April (which provides versions of Windows Embedded CE and Visual Studio with select hardware to hobbyists and academia at lower price points), this contest is aimed at promoting innovative device ideas for the “home of the future.”

The .NET Micro team at Microsoft presented some significant enhancements to their product including Wi-Fi integration, Universal Serial Bus support, Web Services for Devices as well as support for Analog Devices Blackfin processor family. The .NET Micro team also showcased a competition of their own, the Dare to Dream Different Challenge, which pits developers to design new devices using the .NET Micro Framework.

Also in attendance was Real-Time Innovations (RTI) who launched a safety-critical version of its Data Distribution Service. The Safety-Critical Edition supports both OMG’s DDS standard as well as the Real-Time Publish-Subscribe Protocol (RTPS), but with a library size of approximately 130KB.

Zeligsoft announced a new generation of its software communication architecture (SCA) model tool, Zeligsoft CX. In addition to its out-of-the-box specifications, CX is designed to enable further development of domain specific languages to fit new industry standards or project-specific requirements.

Other leading embedded systems vendors in attendance at ESC included American Arium, Altera, American Arium, Black Duck Software, Birdstep Technology, CMX Systems, Coverity, Datalight, Telelogic an IBM company, IntervalZero (Ardence, a Citrix company), Keil (ARM), Lauterbach, McObject, National Instruments, Parasoft, Perforce Software, Protecode, Quadros Systems, Segger Microcontroller, Texas Instruments, The MathWorks, and many others. The SD Best Practices show held on the 3rd Floor of the convention center included Accurev, IBM, the Object Management Group, Progress Software, Urbancode, and several other exhibitors as well.

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.

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

Venture Development Corporation
One Apple Hill Drive
Natick, MA 01760-9904
T: 508.653.9000
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E: info@vdc-corp.com
W: www.vdc-corp.com

VDC Attends 2007 ESC in San Jose

VDC recently attended the 2007 Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

Embedded Boards Review – ESC Boston 2006

The Embedded Systems Conference Boston 2006 was well attended for what we have come to expect from the Boston show. Many vendors that VDC met believed the quality of the show was up and show organizers indicated that both registration and attendance were up. Exhibitors said that meetings and discussions were leading to serious talks and actionable ideas about how their products could be built into systems. Attitudes seemed upbeat and it seems not only the show, but the embedded space as a whole, are generating some momentum.

VDC believes that a key reason for this success and the increasing activity of people in the aisle ready to find new products has in large part to do with RoHS. RoHS has led to pent-up demand in the market that is now being released. When RoHS was first announced, it was not clear what would happen with the directive. The market was not sure if it was for real or if it was something that would fall by the wayside. It is known by now that it is in fact very real and will not go away. Even though this has been evident for some time now, people were skeptical about the first products that would be RoHS-compliant.

For RoHS these were very real concerns due to the tin whisker problems associated with lead-free solders and other durability concerns. For these reasons, it is likely that many people who knew they had a new product development or launch coming up in the timeframe of the launch of RoHS delayed these to avoid falling prey to the pitfalls of being a first adopter. Now the many RoHS-compliant product releases that have come leading up to the July 1, 2006 deadline are alleviating fears to a certain degree. They are beginning to buy components again to launch their own development efforts that had been delayed while they waited to see what would happen with RoHS. VDC believes this was partly responsible for some of the action at the ESC Boston show this year.

THE BEST OF BOSTON

Show

Ampro Computers – The PC/104 stackables and embedded motherboards specialists had the first EPIC Express board at their booth that VDC have seen. It was also the only EPIC Express board on the show floor. We have all known that EPIC Express was coming for some time and many vendors are scrambling to soon release these products, however it appears that Ampro will be one of the first to market with a product. This begins a new generation of innovation for Ampro as they look to be technology leaders with other upcoming solutions such as PC/104 Express.

Demo

It’s about time that a vendor had an exciting demo that peaked the crowd’s interest on a grand scale. This year the clear winner in the best demo category was Sun Microsystems with its large model race track, complete with dueling race cars speeding around the track. We’re sure this was a strong attraction to Sun’s Java exhibit.

NOT SEEN ON THE FLOOR

The notable absences from the show on the embedded hardware side of things were Motorola Embedded Communications Computing (MECC), Radisys, Trenton Technology, Diversified Technology, and Performance Technologies, who did not have booths in the exhibition. As a side note, on the software side many people were talking about Wind River’s absence from the show.

SEEN ON THE FLOOR

VersaLogic had on display the first COM (Computer-On-Module) on an embedded motherboard that we’ve ever seen. A COM for active backplanes (motherboards) is a product that we have expected to see for quite some time now – from anybody. It looks like it will be a successful product for them, giving customers many options to switch in and out different processors without having to buy an entirely new motherboard.

Intel made an announcement during the show that they will be extending the life-cycle support for the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 and T7400 processors for embedded applications to 5 to 7 years. This is aimed at meeting the unique requirements of embedded customers.

AMD was at the show with the message that they intend to place a greater focus on the embedded market moving forward. Similar claims have been made in the past and only time will tell if this really happens, but it appears that AMD’s intentions are genuine. AMD can now offer very real advantages to embedded customers with low-power processors and the ability to integrate video onto chipsets.

VIA Technologies announced the release of an HDTV ready chipset for the embedded market at the show. The chipset is for the VIA C7 and Eden processor platforms and it integrates graphics, audio, memory, storage, and HDTV support all in a single chip design. It appears that the processor and chipset supplier will be targeting the embedded market with integrated products such as their Mini-ITX and Nano-ITX motherboards that offer customers an entire integrated board, processor, and chipset solution.

Advantech is making a push toward integrated embedded computer systems by leveraging their knowledge and expertise in boards to build quality integrated systems around their many board offerings. They were trumpeting their ARK systems as well as a new system that can be used to support high-def graphics on a variety of screens. A major application of this platform will be to put high-definition advertising up on a flat screen display or television. It seems that there would be high demand for such products from store owners and retailers who want to distribute information around their stores or to advertise in-store.

Digital-Logic is well on their way in developing a PC/104 Express standard. We have heard from the industry that there are a few stumbling blocks currently in the way that have been realized as a result of what has been done with the EPIC Express standard, but Digital-Logic seemed upbeat about the prospects for a standard in the not-too-distant future.

Win Enterprises displayed an interesting IP PBX 1U off-the-shelf platform called WIN CAP (Converged Application Platform). This product provides a cost-effective, scalable, and simple-to-use IP PBX platform that customers can use to also take advantage of a reduced time-to-market as compared to developing a proprietary system from scratch.

The small venture-backed start-up CorEdge Networks was featured in CMP’s Disruption Zone, covering companies with technology or business plans/models disruptive to the embedded market. CorEdge Networks is offering their proprietary Bit Stream Processor chip-level hardware and software technology on AMC cards that allows for networking applications to operate at 10Gbps. This firm is focused on the AMC and µTCA segment to distribute their IP, which is in their ASICs.

Embedded Systems Bulletin – September 2006

VDC attended the 2006 Embedded Systems Conference in Boston this week. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

Embedded Systems Conference – Boston 2006

With several of the leading embedded software vendors again taking a pass on exhibiting, this year’s ESC Boston show played out as most anticipated. The Boston show in some ways has established itself as the lesser of the two annual ESC events; however, most attendees and exhibitors seemed satisfied to get about what they expected out of the week. There was a mixed reaction from most vendors on traffic, but more exhibitors than not commented that the quality of the leads from the show exceeded previous years, as well as in some cases, the ESC/San Jose conference held earlier this year.

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

Telelogic/I-Logix – The makers of Rhapsody have done it again with the release of 7.0. The latest version of the company’s model driven development environment is a testament to the company’s relentless determination to improve their product and drive innovation in the tools market. One of the most interesting new features is a new integration with the The MathWorks’ widely popular Simulink tool suite. Developers can now import Simulink modeling blocks into the Rhapsody environment, enabling them to accomplish tasks previously requiring manual interfaces between the two. With a number of other improvements such as features that allow developers to work in a more “code centric” environment and new add-ons enabling enhanced mechanisms for code reuse, the company continues to establish itself as a clear market leader in embedded model driven development. For more information visit: http://www.telelogic.com

Best Demo

It’s about time a vendor had an exciting demo that entertained conference attendees on a grand scale. This year the clear winner in the best demo category was Sun Microsystems with its large model race track complete with dueling race cars speeding around the track. We’re sure this was a strong attraction to Sun’s Java exhibit.

Key Announcement

With well-placed banners and a clear message, Mentor Graphics announced that they would be reducing the price of their EDGE development tools to $2,995 per seat. The announcement should be seen as a clear indication of the pricing pressure that may continue to impact the market going forward. With its corporate strength residing in the EDA market and a history of not hesitating to aggressively compete on price in other instances, VDC believes that other vendors in the market should not fail to take note of Mentor Graphics’ latest movements. In dropping the price of its EDGE development tools, the company is clearly throwing down a challenge to other commercial vendors to justify charging more for their operating systems and tools and demonstrate the additional value they can provide. The company complemented this significant announcement with additional improvements to its Nucleus operating system and a key partnership with STMicroelectronics and the Nomadik product line. VDC expects this partnership to further support Mentor Graphics’ push into the application processor segment of the mobile phone market, where the company already has dominance around the requirement for baseband processor operating systems.

Ensuing Pricing Battles in the Operating System and Development Tools Market

Mentor Graphics’ announcement was part of a larger theme VDC observed at the show. It is increasingly clear that many suppliers are determined to offer quality, commercial-grade development tools at significantly lower per seat prices. These efforts are rapidly shifting the value of software solutions higher up the stack. Consequently, leading vendors are pushing to deliver solutions to market that provide a much broader level of value than before, in order to effectively compete for high-end customers and encourage embedded systems manufacturers to standardize on their software solutions.

WALKING THE FLOOR

ENEA announced version 2.0 of its Element High Availability middleware product that uses Enea’s LINX communications services and supports a number of Linux operating systems and AdvancedTCA systems. The company also revealed an Eclispe-based IDE to support its OSE RTOS called Optima starting at $3,000 per seat.

Green Hills Software demonstrated its commitment to bringing more function into its MULTI tool chain with the introduction of MULTI 5.0. The release included a major upgrade to TimeMachine, a source code analyzer called DoubleCheck, a distributed project builder, and a high-speed system simulation tool. The company also announced a new version of its GHNet TCP/IP networking software and the availability of SuperTrace probe and TimeMachine for Freescale’s ColdFire microcontrollers.

After celebrating a 10 year anniversary, Express Logic announced ThreadX RTOS support for Tensilica’s Diamond Standard and Xtensa processor cores. Marketing VP John Carbone also participated in a “No BS” panel discussion on the use of Linux in real-time and embedded systems. The premise of the panel was based in part on recent research findings from CMP that the use of Linux in the embedded market is on the decline (research that contradicts VDC’s latest findings).

IBM Rational was also in attendance with demonstrations of its new Eclispe-based Rational Systems Developer product released early this year. The software modeling leader continues to highlight its focus on the systems market and the benefits of an integrated set of life-cycle management tools.

LynuxWorks announced that Dr. Inder M. Singh has assumed the role of company chairman, with Gurjot Singh replacing him as CEO and president. In addition, LynuxWorks made several other announcements at the show including the release of LynxOS-SE, a new partitioned real-time operating system based on the LynxOS-178 product line. The new product offers POSIX and ARINC compliance and an ability to run Linux applications in safety-critical applications. Lynuxworks also noted complete support for Xilinx 32-bit processors with its LynxOS product and announced that RTI’s Data Distribution Service middleware would be ported to the new LynxOS-SE product.

RTI also had a number of announcements including the release of the RTI Data Distribution Service version 4.1 with enhanced messaging QoS and the introduction of its own tool suite called the RTI Developer Platform. The company also announced a partnership with up-and-coming modeling tools vendor Sparx Systems, an emerging provider at the low end of the market.

In addition to announcing its platform partnership with Wind River Systems and one of its recent design wins in the industrial automation market, Aonix announced ObjectAda Real-Time RAVEN’s availability for SYSGO AG’s PikeOS product, which also uses software partitioning to enable safety-critical certification and the introduction of Linux applications.

This year, VDC and Adams Capital Management sponsored CMP’S “The Disruption Zone,” a group of companies with the potential to “propel the next big leap forward in the embedded market.” In addition to grouping these companies in a single location on the exhibit floor, the area featured an event where these suppliers could discuss the details of the unique opportunities that their products offer.

Encirq, participating as one of the nine identified Disruption Zone companies, announced the release of DeviceSQL 3.0. Virtutech, the supplier of full system simulation development tools aimed at accurately simulating hardware to enabling better software and systems development, was also attended as member. Other Disruption Zone members included CorEdge Networks, Enpirion, SecureRF, Sensor Platforms, Quantum Leaps, Quickfilter Technologies, and UltraCell.


The Embedded Business Group of Hitachi America announced the launch of Entier, a new relational database management system for embedded devices. The small footprint database (less than 1MB) offers advanced spatial, contextual and incremental text search capabilities. The solution is particularly suited to address the GPS navigation, set top box, and mobile phone markets, but the company also expects to serve additional markets going forward.

McObject announced a partnership with eCosCentric where McObject has ported its eXtremeDB in-memory embedded database to the eCosPro developers’ kit for the eCos open source RTOS. In addition, the company announced the availability of Perst Lite, a micro-footprint version of the Perst open source, object oriented embedded database.

MaCraigor Systems announced the availability of usb2sprite, the companies USB 2.0 interface product, for Coldfire and DSP 56300 processors and the now company has support for these microprocessors within its GNU toolset, with sample configurations for standard evaluation boards.

Grammatech, the provider of code analysis tools, released CodeSonar 2.0 with added C++ support and the ability to analysis source code larger than a million lines of code. The company also signed agreements with UK-based Scientific Computers and MDS Technology of Korea to distribute its technologies abroad.

Microcross announced that they had entered into an integration/distribution agreement with TrollTech to integrate and resell Qtopia along with its own Linux-oriented GNU X-Tools product.

Other embedded systems vendors also in attendance at the show were American Arium, Ardence, Carbon Design Systems, Coverity, Ember, IAR Systems, IBM Rational, Keil (an ARM company), Lauterbach, Klocwork, LDRA, Microcross, MKS, Perforce, Polyspace, Sophia Systems, Quadros, and others.

VDC's Review of the 2006 Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose

Click here to see VDC's review of the 2006 Embedded System Conference

Catch Us at ESC West

Chris and Matt will be at the show. If you would like to schedule time please drop us a line at the office. Email is best. Believe it or not, slots have already started to fill.