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.

VDC Embedded Linux Webinar

Linux in the Embedded Systems Market:
Project Requirements, Preferences, Trends & More


Although originally developed for general-purpose use on desktops and servers, the use of Linux within embedded devices continues to increase. The licensing cost advantages associated with Linux, the flexibility provided through access to source code, and general familiarity with its use provide a compelling value proposition to embedded system manufacturers.

VDC conducts an annual embedded engineering survey that covers embedded software, hardware, tools, and development practices. Focused on the embedded developer community, the survey offers insights into current development projects – requirements, preferences and trends.

Based on real data, this eg3.com Tech Choice Webinar explores:

• What are the factors for designing in Linux?


• What types of industries and applications is Linux targeted for?


• What’s the migration path in the use of Linux?


• Which Linux distributions are being used?

Register for this FREE webinar if:

• You or your company, or teams are using Linux or contemplating the use of Linux in an embedded development project or just curious about Linux.


• Your company is a software/hardware solution provider participating in the embedded market and interested in understanding how Linux is being used to engineer embedded devices/systems.

Click here to register for this ARCHIVED event hosted by eg3.com.

Intel Strengthens Multi-core Software Tool Portfolio with RapidMind Acquisition

What Happened?

On August 19th, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) announced that it had purchased multi-core software development tool vendor RapidMind. This acquisition is Intel’s third in as many months targeted to offer its customers additional options to meet the software development challenges presented by multi-core processors.

Primarily targeted at enterprise and high performance computing, RapidMind’s development and runtime platform analyzes and optimizes C++ code to run on multi-core processors. Last month, Intel acquired Cilk Arts, a company who offers a compiler-based parallel programming solution also targeted at C ++. While the aforementioned companies were both small private companies with little potential for a near term impact on Intel’s bottom line, the company’s acquisition of embedded system solution provider Wind River Systems (Delisted – NASDAQ: WIND) in June provides Intel with immediate relevance within embedded software multi-core solution discussion.

VDC’s View

For years, mark pundits (ourselves included) have mused about the software gap limiting the adoption and effective utilization of multi-core processors. Semiconductor product roadmaps are quickly forcing development teams to reevaluate their current or future processor migration paths in order to protect the investments represented by their software code bases.

Preliminary results from our 2009 Embedded System Engineering Survey show that 18% of respondents cite either a multi-core or multi-core and multiprocessor design on their current project, compared to approximately 7% of last year’s respondents. Although engineers surveyed in past years had anticipated higher rates of adoption – it appears as if additional knowledge of and experiences with the various technical and commercial challenges associated with migration to multi-core processors have allowed OEMs to begin broader implementation.

In 2008, VDC’s study of the embedded software multi-core component and tools market revealed Wind River in the top spot as a percent of 2007 commercial market revenues. Since that time, Wind River has enhanced its multi-core solution portfolio with the extension of SMP and AMP capabilities for its run-time solutions in combination with the release of its hypervisor this spring.

While there is a possibility that Wind’s acquisition by Intel may limit the former’s access to and development around non-IA architectures in the long term, it is clear that Intel is committed to providing its customers – both embedded and enterprise – with the software solutions necessary to successfully develop and deploy next generation multi-core systems.

In case you missed it, check out our other commentary on Intel’s acquisition of Wind River Systems:

• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems
• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 1
• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 2
  

The WINDs of Change Reveal Embedded Linux Constants

A recently published report by VDC Research indicates that Wind River Systems is now the leading commercial supplier of solutions for the embedded Linux market, ranked as a percentage of total market revenue.

After Wind River’s ascension to the top spot, we thought it would be fitting to take a look back at the competitive landscape when Wind first entered the market. Although the landscape has changed rather significantly over just a five year period, Wind River’s chief competitor within the space, MontaVista Software, has maintained a position of leadership within this dynamic market.

In fact – until this most recent report – MontaVista Software had resided atop the competitive landscape since VDC published its first Linux report covering the 2000 market, which is an especially significant achievement given the number and magnitude of other changes within this market.

“The embedded Linux ecosystem remains highly fragmented due to the large number of public and commercial distributions and tools available to embedded systems manufacturers, said Chris Rommel, Analyst with VDC’s Embedded Software and Tools Practice. “The commercial embedded Linux market, however, has remained a two horse race over the past few years and Wind River finally caught up. It will be interesting to see if it was just a short sprint or if they can hold their lead going forward.”

Will the Wind Shift Again?

While it appears as though Wind River has maintained their momentum and lead through the first half of 2009, this significant shift in the competitive landscape may only be temporary given Intel’s recent acquisition of Wind River Systems. Although Wind River’s products and services portfolio may strengthen Intel’s semiconductor value proposition, VDC estimates that Intel architecture designs currently represent less than 15% of Wind River’s overall revenue. As a result, a significant amount of Wind River’s market share will rest on Intel’s ability and willingness (not to mention that of their competitors) to maintain support for non Intel processing platforms.

This acquisition might just provide MontaVista the second wind it needs, enabling them to alter their go-to-market strategy and regain lost market share.

VDC explores these industry trends and other critical issues affecting this market in the recently released report, Linux in the Embedded Systems Market, Volume 2 from Track 1 of VDC’s 2009 Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service.

Welcome, Mentor Graphics. Seriously.

What Happened?

Mentor Graphics announced at the Design Automation Conference a new strategy to target the next generation of mobile and non-mobile Linux devices. This expansion into the embedded Linux market will be supported by their acquisition of Embedded Alley, an embedded Linux product and services firm headquartered in San Jose with development offices in Russia. Oddly enough, no terms of the acquisition were disclosed as part of the announcement.

Similarly to IBM’s entrance into the PC market over twenty-five years ago, the magnitude of recent commitments to mobile Linux by tech industry stalwarts Google, Intel, and now Mentor Graphics help to validate Linux as a consumer-facing embedded operating system.

VDC’s View

Mentor’s market share in the embedded and real-time operating systems market has eroded over recent years, particularly with respect to its business in the mobile phone market and their inability to scale revenue from the no royalty-based Nucleus operating system in hundreds of millions of cell phones.

At the same time, advances in semiconductor technologies and the continued reductions in the cost of memory have allowed many device classes to deploy larger footprint embedded operating systems, such as Linux, than previously possible. Moreover, the Open Handset Alliance and the LiMo Foundation have generated a substantial amount of interest in and momentum for Linux as a mobile phone OS.

This acquisition signifies a renewed focus on the embedded software market as Mentor’s core EDA market stagnates. Much of the upside for Mentor, however, resides beyond mobile in the other application classes, such as telecom/datacom and military/aerospace, where their Nucleus RTOS is also widely deployed. Mentor can now offer their current and potential clients a choice or combination of operating systems to meet their varying project requirements.

Conversely, while a Linux offering will certainly aid Mentor’s embedded software value proposition, they acquired a company focused on professional services. As such, much of the acquisition’s value rests on the talent and retention of Embedded Alley’s team.

Although professional service capabilities continue to gain importance in the commercial embedded Linux market, Mentor has never had much services revenue around its traditional product offerings. As a result, we expect that Mentor’s ability to support and expand their professional services will ultimately dictate the success of entrance into the embedded Linux market.

The timing of this announcement is also rather fortuitous for Mentor given Intel’s recent acquisition of Wind River Systems. Wind River’s acquisition not only validates the growing importance of Linux in embedded systems, but it also presents other market participants with an opportunity to capitalize on any of the ensuing uncertainty or reevaluation in the market around Intel/Wind River’s support for non-Intel architectures..

This announcement is, in fact, just the latest action in a string of moves by other operating system vendors over recent years to offer Linux in addition to a proprietary real-time OS solution (i.e. Enea, LynuxWorks, SYSGO AG, and Wind River Systems, etc.).

In similar fashion to Wind River’s recent gains in the embedded Linux market, Mentor’s new offerings may allow it to recapture lost customers who had previously migrated from Nucleus to Linux as well as attract new device designs where Linux is a requirement. As a result, we expect that the collective smiles at MontaVista Software that appeared after Intel’s announced acquisition of WRS may be more tempered as they come to terms with the entrance of another deep-pocketed competitor offering Linux support.

Although Mentor was late to the party, it may turn out that they were just in time. In either case, welcome, Mentor Graphics. Seriously.

Down 2009 Expected to Lead to Growth in 2010 Embedded/Real-time Operating System Market

A recently published report by VDC Research indicates that embedded system manufacturers’ requirements and end-consumers’ expectations continue to drive substantial investment in embedded software and development tools.

The embedded and real-time operating system market, in particular, has faired better than many other sectors of the broader embedded market, with 2008 revenue demonstrating 9% growth over 2007. However, even this achievement is qualified with the expectation of the first industry contraction in 2009 since 2002.

“As a whole, the embedded operating system market has been greatly affected by the reduction in unit shipments over the past nine months due to the substantial percentage of market revenues typically derived from production licenses,” says Chris Rommel, Analyst with VDC’s Embedded Software and Tools Practice. “However, the magnitude of the recession’s impact has been tempered within the embedded and real-time segment due to the growing demands for software-driven functionality coupled with mounting device safety and security considerations and new device requirements.”

Although the recession has and is expected to continue to negatively impact the market for embedded and real-time operating systems in 2009, certain vertical markets have been less affected in the short term while others hold the potential to rebound significantly in 2010.

For example, innovation within the medical device industry will drive growth as cart-mounted devices consolidate sensing and computing components into smaller, mobile form factors and device software is placed under greater regulatory scrutiny. By contrast, the retail automation industry market is expected to demonstrate the largest percent decrease from 2008 to 2009 as retail stores combat falling revenues by limiting capital expenditures on new kiosks and POS equipment. However, VDC expects the retail segment to rebound significantly after showing modest growth in 2010 to grow in excess of 20% in 2011 as these companies begin to parlay increased cash flow into investments in enhancing efficiencies and consumer experiences.

VDC expects market participants who – in spite of the current economic climate – remain focused on targeted product development for and marketing to these and other key vertical markets will improve their ability to emerge from this downturn with greater revenue growth and market share.

VDC explores these industry trends and other critical issues affecting this market in the recently released report, Embedded/Real-time and Mobile Application Operating Systems, Volume 1 from Track 1 of VDC’s 2009 Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service.

To view a PDF of the press release, Click Here.

~

Yesterday, VDC published the 2009 Linux in Embedded Systems report in which a major change in the competitive landscape was announced.

Stay tuned for more highlights from that report.

Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 2

VDC’s Continuing Analysis

As we said last week, “one could well imagine the discussions that are going on both sides of the embedded market”. Most likely this included many, many calls from both Intel and Wind River with their various strategic partners. Some partners may be satisfied, at least in the near term, and others more skeptical on Wind River’s position to continue to enable multiple hardware architectures and the ways in which they plan to securely partition sensitive, confidential company information between the subsidiary and mother Intel going forward.

Business as usual?

We suspect that software partners are less skeptical in the near term over the agreement and in some cases delighted to hear the news. Why? Because it creates an opening that many hope to explore and take advantage of to increase market share. These opportunities scale both VxWorks and Linux development on non-Intel architectures.

Never mind discussions on just both sides of the hardware/software market – embedded manufacturers are also a major part of the conversation. Consider the fact that automotive, military, aerospace, telecom and other type of development projects can take years of development and life-cycle support. In the case of military and aerospace, you can be talking about decades of support.

Can Intel/Wind or WinDtel convince these types of embedded manufacturers that they will continue to support, optimize, and invest in multiple architectures over their product development life? What can these manufacturers expect from their silicon suppliers? Will these silicon suppliers continue to be engaged in the short- and long-term with Wind River? VDC expects that none of these questions have been answered at this time but we also expect that embedded manufacturers are already conducting their due diligence and asking a lot of questions as part of looking at contingency plans for existing and new project designs on the drawing board that design in non-Intel silicon.

From an engineering perspective, it is difficult to design out any one component of a platform -hardware, operating system, development tools, etc. - within existing projects. There’s any number of technical challenges, a comfort factor, in many cases years of experience, and a trusted supplier relationship that need to be weighed as part of any decision to transition. Hard decisions for sure, which could be necessary and costly for embedded manufacturers.

Could history be an indicator of what to expect?

Two examples come to mind. The first is from the 2000/2001 timeframe when Wind River System acquired ISI and questions abounded about support for pSOS and pRISM (development tool environment). For embedded manufacturers faced with the reality of having to move to the VxWorks platform (at some time), the competition seized on the opportunity and looked to take advantage of the situation by offering various migration and evacuation kits from pSOS to other platforms. Could we see similar moves like this from the marketplace in the near term?

The second was reminded to VDC as part of a discussion last week with a hardware market supplier - the acquisition of Metrowerks by Motorola. Metrowerks at the time was a leading supplier of software development tools with their CodeWarrior tool chain which supported multiple non-Moto architectures such as MIPS, Hitachi, etc. The acquisition resulted in Metrowerks becoming a subsidiary of Motorola with a corporate commitment to continue to invest in, support, and enable multiple hardware architectures via the CodeWarrior tool chain.

This acquisition in particular has an eerily similar ring to the Intel/Wind acquisition – subsidiaries, continuing to support multiple hardware architectures, looking for other opportunities to do business with embedded manufacturers. This may have worked in the short term for Motorola but over time the decision was made to pull support of non-Moto architectures and focus on offering a tool chain solely optimized for Motorola/Freescale silicon.

For sure, Intel is serious about the embedded market with a goal to increase sales of embedded processors. Questions will continue and parties will look to posture themselves in ways that protect and/or seize on the opportunity to expand market share.

It may be business as usual in the short-term, but we expect to see some signals coming from the market as to which direction this acquisition will take.

Maybe some signs from silicon and software suppliers with new announcements of expanding strategic partnerships and/or support for new software platforms?

Or perhaps mid- to longer-term with software supplier announcements on new design wins in the key markets on which Wind River Systems has traditionally focused?

Only time will tell.

VDC will continue to follow this announcement and look to comment further so check back to the Blog or register via RSS or email to be notified when Blog updates are posted.

Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 1

VDC’s Analysis

VDC's investigation and analysis of Intel's planned acquisition of Wind River Systems is on going, but the following represents some of our initial thoughts and questions after considering today's news:

One could well imagine the discussions that are going on both sides of the embedded market. On one side, you have ARM, Freescale, MIPS and a host of other silicon partners. On the other side, you have software and tools suppliers such as Microsoft, Green Hills Software, LynuxWorks, QNX Software Systems, MontaVista Software, and a host of other software suppliers.

Today’s announcement indicates that “As an Intel subsidiary, Wind River will continue to develop innovative, commercial grade software platforms that support multiple hardware architectures …” Considering this statement, it’s somewhat easy to understand that questions are being raised and the implications being examined from both sides.

How might this acquisition limit the timely access to technology roadmaps and support for current relationships within the supply-side of the embedded software market? Could suppliers find themselves at a disadvantage somewhere down the road?

Wind River Systems supports a host of silicon architectures from multiple suppliers. It is critical for both the hardware and software segments to align silicon and software well in advance of availability. This requires strategic relationships in which technology roadmaps and engineering support is leveraged by both parties. Is it reasonable to expect that ARM or Freescale or MIPS amongst others would share their technology roadmaps with an Intel subsidiary so that their architectures could be enabled through Wind River’s software solutions?

There are certainly more questions than answers at this time and discussions on both sides of the embedded market will continue as they sort out the ramifications of such an acquisition.

Wind River is hosting their Q1 FY2010 earnings call this afternoon (June 4) at 5 p.m. EDT. This is certain to be topic discussed and questioned further during the course of the call. Details on the call can be found at" http://ir.windriver.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=91814&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1291330&highlight

Stay tuned as VDC looks to comment further.

Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems

What Happened?

In a mammoth, $884 million deal, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) announced its intent to acquire Wind River Systems (NASDAQ: WIND). The aggregate price tag puts approximately a 44% premium over the June 3rd closing price of $8.00 per share for WRS common stock.

After this acquisition, which is expected to close this summer, Wind River would operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel and report into its Software and Services Group.

VDC’s View

This acquisition signifies a strategic extension of the partnership that Intel has been strengthening with WRS over recent years, as Intel has been attempting to extend its reach into more resource constrained, deeply embedded devices and as WRS has been positioning itself as a leading provider of software solutions for multi-core architectures.

Beyond the promise of offering enhanced system integration and faster time-to-market to their customers, VDC expects that this acquisition offers Intel the critical core competencies to expand its business within the mobile device segment. The maturation of Wind River's product and service offerings targeted at this device class - especially with respect to Linux - should help Intel better serve a mobile industry that has long been dominated by ARM IP-based silicon.

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

VDC’s Unveils Unique New Research Program for The OEM Community

VDC announces the release of a unique research program targeted specifically to the needs of senior embedded engineering and program managers called The Embedded Advantage™. More information about the Embedded Advantage™ Research Program can be found here. The subscription service draws upon VDC’s two decades of experience covering the embedded computing market and helps managers compare the performance of their project teams against others within the embedded industry, learn more about best practices and emerging trends in embedded software development, and track new products and services from the leading embedded technology suppliers. According to Mitch Solomon, CEO of VDC Research “The Embedded Advantage™ leverages what we believe is the largest – and continuously expanding – database of information about embedded systems engineering in the world. Subscribers to the service will have access to an extremely robust set of tools to help them better design and manage their projects.”

For more information about The Embedded Advantage™, click here. To learn more about VDC Research Group, please visit our web site at http://www.vdcresearch.com/.

We are interested in your thoughts and suggestions for our new research program. Please feel free to post your comments.

Virtualization for Embedded Systems - Market Update

For enterprise IT applications, virtualization has emerged as a key strategy to control costs by consolidating servers, therefore reducing the related hardware, floor space, power consumption, and cooling. Over the last several years, the number of virtualization solutions specifically targeted at embedded applications has increased dramatically.

What?

VDC considers “virtualization for embedded systems” to be a condition whereby executable software technologies running on a target embedded system/device that enable other guest operating systems or software to execute while either fully or partially separated from direct exchanges with the underlying processor(s) or hardware.

The executable software technology can include:

• Hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) – Software running directly on the hardware that primarily functions as a host for one or more guest operating systems.
  
• Microkernel or real-time operating system – Software that can serve as a host for one or more guest operating systems but also serves as an operating system itself typically providing key features required by or desirable to the function of the target system (e.g., real-time performance, secure partitioning, and small footprint).

“Virtualization for embedded systems” should not be confused with another similar class of tools that allows embedded engineers to simulate the function of a range of processors and/or hardware systems (often under development and unavailable to a developer). VDC refers to these solutions as virtual system prototyping/simulation tools. Within the embedded tools market these solutions are also commonly referred to as:

• Virtual system prototyping;
• Virtual system simulation;
• Virtual platforms; and/or
• Virtualized software development.

Why?

The value proposition of virtualization in the Enterprise/IT space is well understood; however, the value proposition for embedded solutions extends beyond those driving growth within the IT market. Some of these drivers include:

• Migration and adoption of new hardware architectures, such as multi-core processors, as a result of processor obsolescence, semiconductor advances, etc.
  
• Ability to consolidate and make better use of hardware and application software
  
• Need to leverage/re-use legacy software code, especially in instances where significant investment has been spent on development, testing and/or certification by one or more regulatory bodies
  
• Continued importance of safety- and security-critical requirements
  Ability to enable a desired “user experience” while still ensuring determinism and/or security
  
• Desire to isolate GPL-licensed or other open source code from proprietary code

Who?

Some of the vendors currently offering or developing virtualization solutions for embedded systems include:

• Green Hills Software
• LynuxWorks
• Open Kernel Labs
• Real Time Systems GmbH
• SYSGO AG
• TenAsys
• VirtualLogix
• VMware (recently acquired TRANGO Virtual Processors)
• Wind River Systems

So What?

The diversity of embedded project requirements, software, and hardware, has created an opportunity for solutions that can ease the integration of applications, operating systems, and hardware platforms while also providing a vehicle to preserve legacy investments. We expect that an increasing number of embedded engineering teams will look toward virtualization as a development solution for their projects going forward.

Based on VDC’s 2008 Embedded Systems Engineering survey less than 5% of developers reported the use of virtualization in their current development project. Virtualization can certainly be employed to solve a variety of problems, but its value as a solution (and thus its adoption) will be measured against the potential for added cost, latency, resource consumption, and system complexity that comes with it.

Although developers’ expectations suggest that adoption is increasing, this growth is expected to remain moderate with use remaining below 10% for their next project. The intriguing questions going forward will be how this technology will be positioned and how it affects the greater embedded software and tool vendor competitive landscape.

• What more can suppliers of virtualization technology do to help engineers understand what this technology offers and how this technology can be employed to solve real problems?
  
• What will happen to the commercial viability of standalone virtualization vendors as larger companies with broader solution sets develop their own offerings?
  
• Will the presence of a virtualization solution within a company’s product suite affect a development team’s choice of an OS (regardless of current need for virtualization)?
  
• Will the evolution of advanced multiprocessing operating systems cannibalize any of the need or commercial market for virtualization solutions?
  
• Finally, how will the current economy affect the adoption of new technologies like virtualization or multi-core processors?

VDC examines virtualization in greater depth in the recently published Industry Brief 1: Virtualization for Embedded Systems. The brief also includes profiles of the competing vendors as well as an examination of current and future project use of virtualization for embedded systems development.

We are interested in your thoughts. Please feel free to post comments.

Now Available: Embedded Systems Market Statistics

Embedded Software 2008 Market Intelligence Service
Track 3: Embedded Systems Market Statistics

VDC Research Group is pleased to announce the release of seven reports on embedded systems market statistics, as part its 2008 Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service. The statistics are based on detailed Web survey responses from hundreds of embedded developers and VDC’s proprietary embedded systems market statistics model. This model is a tool for estimating and forecasting the global population of embedded engineers, the global number of project starts, and the Total Market for Embedded Software Engineering (TMESE). Each volume focuses on one of the following key vertical markets:

Volume 1: Automotive/Transportation
Volume 2: Consumer Electronics
Volume 3: Industrial Automation
Volume 4: Medical Devices
Volume 5: Military/Aerospace
Volume 6: Mobile Phones
Volume 7: Telecom/Datacom

Research Highlights

Through a combination of modeled estimates and end-user data analysis, each Embedded Systems Market Statistics volume includes but is not limited to the following information:

• Demographics (Geographic region, primary role, type of product developed, and application type)
• Key Industry Trends (General market and system engineering trends)
• Project Statistics (Number of project starts worldwide, average per company, project length, time-to-market, cost of development, percent of cost attributed to software development)
• Labor Statistics (Number of embedded systems engineers working for embedded systems manufacturers, distribution by engineer type, average number of engineers working on current development projects, average age and years developing embedded systems, annual salary)
• Solution Statistics (Total spend on commercial embedded software solutions and percentage by product type, average umber of units shipped by company for 2007 and distribution by operating system type, average number of lines of code developed in-house, number of commercial/third-party lines of code, type of operating system used in current project, type of processor used in current design, use of key programming languages, as well as annual tools budget for software/system engineers)
• Total Market for Embedded Software Engineering (Total spend on commercial products and embedded systems manufacturers labor)

Report Scope

These reports provide key embedded system engineering statistics for seven key vertical markets. These reports rely on information from VDC’s proprietary embedded systems market statistics model. This model is based on information gathered through VDC’s primary and secondary research and includes detailed analysis of our 2008 Embedded Systems Engineering survey.

To access the full PDF version of this brochure as well as other information on these reports, click here

VDC Research Webinar Event

VDC recently announced the launch of our Embedded Software Market Intelligence Program: 2009 Service Year. As part of that announcement, we mentioned our upcoming Webinar presentation that provides an update on the market, including an analysis and outlook for 2009.

We hope you can join us for one of the two planned sessions. You can see more details and register at:

VDC Webinar Events - What’s Next: Embedded Software Market Update, Trends and 2009 Outlook December 2nd, 11:00 AM (U.S. Eastern) December 5th, 2:00 PM (U.S. Eastern). Following the presentation, we’ll also have a Q&A session so we can respond to your specific areas of interest.

Our speakers include Stephen Balacco, Director of our Embedded Software and Tools Practice, and Chris Rezendes, EVP Research Operations, and the following questions will be discussed:

• How is the current global economic downturn impacting near-term prospects for suppliers of embedded software platforms, development tools, and services?
• What are the dynamics of the global market for embedded software/system engineering labor? How is this market evolving?
• How is the growing focus/reliance on software in embedded systems impacting the need for software/system lifecycle management tools and practices?
• What is the impact of open source solutions/communities on the embedded systems market?

We look forward to seeing you at one of these sessions.

VMware Acquisition Targets Virtualization for Mobile Devices

What Happened?

Last week, VMware publicly revealed that it had acquired France-based embedded virtualization vendor Trango Virtual Processors in October. The acquisition of Trango’s solutions, which support virtualization on ARM and MIPS-based architectures, is intended to help broaden VMware’s target market beyond x86 platforms and specifically into the mobile phone space.

In positioning the Trango’s virtualization technology within the mobile phone space, VMware is emphasizing:

• The benefits to manufacturers of faster time-to-market and easier porting of more robust operating systems
• The ability of end users to manage multiple device profiles and more seamlessly make use of PC-based applications.

VMware plans to release the new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) based on this technology sometime in 2009 (late 2009 by some reports).

VDC’s View

This development is big news for virtualization solution providers playing in the embedded systems space. Vendors have long been looking to ride the coattails of VMware’s success story, attempting to draw strong parallels that would signal the inevitable arrival of virtualization within the embedded systems domain as well.

However, despite the fact that some of the value propositions of virtualization within the desktop and server computing market hold true for the embedded domain, there are also key differences that make an apples-to-apples comparison challenging. One of the most glaring of these is the diversity of hardware architectures that continue to be used across embedded projects -- embedded engineering is far from a homogeneous x86 world.

Despite the growing interest in virtualization technology over the last few years, VDC’s research points to the fact that the current use of virtualization across the larger embedded space remains low. That said, VDC has also seen higher reported rates of virtualization use specific to the mobile phone segment of the embedded market. VDC anticipates that future growth of virtualization within embedded system projects is most likely to be strongest in industries where hardware architectures are either similar to PC and server environments and/or becoming more uniform and platform specific. The standardization of system platforms in industries like the mobile phone market, point to growing opportunities for virtualization going forward.

Key embedded solution competitors bracing for strong adoption of virtualization within the mobile phone market such as VirtualLogix, Open Kernel Labs, Green Hills Software, and others, likely see VMware’s move as more validation that virtualization is destined to reach the mobile and embedded markets in earnest over the coming years. However, with a large, established vendor like VMware (and parent EMC) now looking to grow its business in the mobile phone space, it also may be a cause for concern for some vendors that had previously hoped to be the VMware of embedded - but now will have to compete more directly with the virtualization giant itself.

Multi-Core and Multiprocessing Support Remain Low Priorities in Selection of Embedded OS

Natick, Massachusetts – August 5, 2008 – Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that many embedded developers still do not yet consider multiprocessing and multi-core architecture support a highly critical factor influencing their selection of embedded operating systems for current projects.

Moreover, these criteria remained of relatively low importance even to those developers who indicated that they were using a multi-core or multi-core and multiprocessor design for their current project.

While their preferences did indicate a discernable increase in the relative importance of support for multi-core architectures, their top-eight section criteria remained consistent with those of the overall population. Although VDC expects this selection dynamic to continue change going forward as more embedded projects incorporate multi-core processors, it is clear that factors such as the reliability, cost, and the availability of development tools will continue to drive purchasing decisions.

“While the percentage of developers incorporating multi-core processors is expected to increase going forward, it remains to be seen how this technology will ultimately affect the overall commercial market for embedded software,” says Chris Rommel, Analyst with VDC’s Embedded Software Practice. “Increased adoption of multi-core processors may not necessarily cause embedded device manufacturers’ software spend to increase more per year than it would have organically. This technology, however, may have the potential to affect the competitive landscape going forward and shift the relative distribution of market revenue if a clear disparity in multi-core or multiprocessing support emerges between the vendors that have traditionally led the embedded market.”

VDC explores these and other critical issues within the market for embedded multi-core software solutions in the recently released report, Multi-Core Components and Tools, Volume 4 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.

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.

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
F: 508.653.9836
E: info@vdc-corp.com
W: www.vdc-corp.com

VDC Launches a New Proposal - “The Embedded Software Developer: Project Requirements, Preferences, and Trends

Venture Development Corporation (VDC) has recently released a new proposal titled “The Embedded Software Developer: Project Requirements, Preferences, and Trends.” These statistics-driven data books are based on detailed Web survey responses from almost 800 embedded developers worldwide. This survey provides insight into specific embedded developer communities’ that will offer readers the most detail understanding about the dynamics of the embedded market available in any syndicated market intelligence program available.

We expect our research will address questions you might have, including:

• Where can I get a more detailed understanding of the differences between development teams based on their current development project target OS type (i.e. commercial, open source, in-house developed, no formal)? How can I target development teams to capture new business opportunities?
• Should I expand to new geographical regions or vertical markets? What are the software requirements, team size, and related spending plans by region? By vertical market?
• What do development teams that use specific types of software development tools (i.e., IDEs, software modeling, requirements management, source/change management, etc.) look like? What type of business relationship might I look to establish within the greater ecosystem?
• What types of architectures/processors are being used in current development projects? How well do my products and strategies line up with current and future project processor types? Where should I look to expand my support?

In an effort to offer greater flexibility and choice, VDC has packaged these reports in a way that leverages our extensive knowledge of the embedded developer community. The data books are defined, organized and packaged by specific developer communities of interest and market segments. Attached please find the proposal which details packaging, content and pricing.

Please feel free to contact either Matt Volckmann (508.653.9000 x143) or Stephen Balacco (508.653.9000 x124) to address any questions or interests you might have regarding the “The Embedded Software Developer: Project Requirements, Preferences, and Trends” proposal.