mte april2011web

8/9/2019 mte april2011web

1/23

www.embeddednews.co.uk April 2011

MICROCONTROLLERSSystem level design

FOR DESIGNERS OF EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Also in this issue

GAMING PLATFORMSThe importance of AMD’s G series

FPGAsCustom-made interfacesEMBEDDED WORLD

All the news from Nuremberg

MISRA MATTERS

http://www.embeddednews.co.uk/


2/23

Mc Tecy Ee • A 2011

Contents 3

04 NEWS

12 COMMENT12 PEOPLE

13 DIARY

14 EMBEDDED WORLD 2011Steve Rogerson presents a round-up ofsome of the highlights at Embedded World inNuremberg last month

22 MICROCONTROLLERSTwo overriding parameters now determine

the success or failure of any newmicrocontroller family. Odo Akaji explainshow combining them successfully canpromote the MCU from a supporting role to

the star of the show

27 MULTIMEDIA ANDGAMING

AMD’s G series of processors has caught the imagination of the gaming industry.Nick Jarmany looks at what makes themso attractive

30 FPGAsThe latest FPGAs with integrated PCIExpress interfaces can be used asIO hubs in industrial and automotiveapplications. Bob Blake explains how andlooks at the tools available to help

36 MISRA MATTERSChris Hills continues his quarterly columnkeeping you up to date with the workMisra is doing

38 PRODUCT NEWS

PUBLISHED BY:

MT Publications Limited

Prudence Place,

Proctor Way

Luton

Bedfordshire

LU2 9PE

United Kingdom.

Tel: +44 (0)1582 722460

Fax: +44 (0)1582 722470.

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.embeddednews.co.uk

ISSN: 1352 7312

EDITOR:

Steve Rogerson

[email protected]

EdiToriAl ConTribuTors:

Odo Akaji, Nick Jarmany,

Bob Blake and Chris Hills

DESIGNER:

Victoria Wren

[email protected]

AdvErTisEMEnT MAnAgEr:

Pauline West

[email protected]

CirCulATion &

subsCripTion MAnAgEr:

Wendy Magee

[email protected]

ACCounTs &

AdMinisTrATion MAnAgEr:

Kim Hughes

[email protected]

publishing AssisTAnT:

Ruthanne Hornshaw

[email protected]

PUBLISHER:

David Williams

[email protected]

Micro Technology Europe is available

to readers in the United Kingdom

not meeting the terms of control at

an annual rate of £55. The overseas

subscription rate is US$130. Micro

Technology Europe is published

11 times a year by MT Publications

Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of

Micro Technology Europe may be

reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying

and recording on any information

storage system without the written

consent of the publisher. The publisher

cannot be held responsible for loss

or damage to unsolicited press

releases and/or photographs. Views

of contributors and advertisers do not

necessarily reflect the policy of Micro

Technology Europe or those of the

publishers.

contents

INDUSTRIAL

MEDICAL

AEROSPACE

AVIATION

SYSTEM ON A CHIP

CONSUMER

Express Logic has completed 14 y ears

of successful business operation,

and our flagship product, ThreadX,

has been used in over 800 million

electronic devices and systems,

ranging from printers to smartphones, from single-chip

SoCs to multiprocessors. Time and time again, whenleading manufacturers put their company on the line,

when their engineering team chooses an RTOS for their

next critical product, they c hoose ThreadX.

Our ThreadX RTOS is rock-solid, thoroughly field-proven,

and represents not only the safe choice, but the mostcost-effective choice when your company’s product

ThreadX, FileX, and TraceX are registered trademarks, and NetX, USBX, PrismX, StackX, and Certification Pack are trademarks of Express Logic, Inc.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Copyright © 2010, Express Logic, Inc.

When Your Company’s Success, And Your Job, Are On The Line -

You Can Count On Express Logic’s ThreadX® RTOS

REALLY COUNTSTHREADX: WHEN IT

simply must succeed. Its royalty-free

licensing model helps keep your BOM low,

and its proven dependability helps keep

your support costs down as well. ThreadX

repeatedly tops the time-to-market results

reported by embedded developers like you. All the while,

Express Logic is there to assist you with enhancements,training, and responsive telephone support.

Join leading organizations like HP, Apple, Marvell, Philips, NASA,

and many more who have chosen ThreadX for use in over 800

million of their products – because their products are too

important to rely on anything but the best. Rely on ThreadX,

when it really counts!

Contact Express Logic to find out more about our ThreadX RTOS, FileX® file system, NetX™ Dual IPv4/IPv6 TCP/IP stack,

USBX™ USB Host/Device/OTG stack, and our new PrismX™ graphics toolkit for embedded GUI development. Also ask

about our TraceX® real-time event trace and analysis tool, and StackX™, our patent-pending stack size analysis tool that

makes stack overflows a thing of the past. And if you’re developing safety-critical products for aviation, industrial or

medical applications, ask about our new Cer tification Pack™ for ThreadX.

For a free evaluation copy, visit www.rtos.com • [email protected] • +44 (0) 1527 597007

Ed ward L. La

mie

W i t h T hread X

Se co nd Ed itio n

No w w i thappe nd i ces

for AR M, Cold fire,

M I PS and Po wer PC

arc h ite ctures

Ne wnes

I N C LU D E D

C D-R O M

R EA L - T IM E

E M B E D D E D

M U L T I T H R EA D I

N G

T H R E A D

http://www.rtos.com/http://www.rtos.com/


3/23

pril 2011 • Micro Technology Europe

News

Japan disaster hits supply chain

EmbeddedDisplayport tobecome top

HE DISRUPTION to the supplyhain is proving to be the biggestmpact on the worldwide elec-onics market from the Japanesearthquakes and tsunami.Market watcher IHS ISuppliid this would have a bigger effectan wrecked factories.“While it appears the major

mpact from the recent Japanesearthquake won’t come from directamage to production facilities,e disruption to the supply chainanother matter altogether,” saidale Ford, senior vice president ofarket intelligence at IHS ISuppli.

Suppliers are likely to encounter

fficulties in getting raw materialsupplied, distributed and shippedut over the next few weeks oronths. This is likely lead to somesruption in semiconductor sup-ies coming from Japan.”Japanese suppliers accounted

WITH VGA and LVDS facingphase-out over the next two four years, Displayport andDMI will ultimately be the

nly display interfaces left. And,ccording to In-Stat, embeddedisplayport (EDP) will becomee primary internal connectionr mobile PCs.As a result, In-Stat forecastsat EDP will have an over 80%

enetration into the mobile PCarket by 2014.

“Samsung Electronics has beenhipping EDP-enabled notebookanels since March 2010 andpple has an entire mobile PCne with external Displayport, asell as some models with EDP,”id Brian O’Rourke, principal

nalyst. “There are some prob-ms with EDP. Since the tech-ology is not widely available,e cost is high in comparison toVDS, but that will diminish overme with greater adoption.”The Displayport 1.2 specakes significant improvements,cluding increased data rate, the

bility to daisy chain multiplesplays and the capacity to han-e bidirectional USB 2.0 data.

for more than one fifth of globalsemiconductor production in2010. Companies headquarteredin Japan generated US$63.3bn inmicrochip revenue in 2010, repre-senting 20.8% of the worldwidemarket. While not all of this pro-duction is located in Japan, a largepercentage is produced in manu-facturing facilities in Japan.

“Obviously, it is too early totell how much of the semiconduc-tor supply chain will be impactedor what the result of the Japaneseearthquake will have,” said Ford.

Meanwhile, electronics com-panies that have been directly af-

fected have been working hard tobring production back on line. Aswe went to press, Renesas for ex-ample had restarted some manu-facturing at five of its eight plantsin the country and was preparingto restart at another two. Only the

Naka factory remained shut alto-gether, though even there electric-ity had been partially restored.

Sony had restored productionat some factories but still had sixplants shut altogether and warnedthat it may have to re-shut someof those that had started if it couldnot source raw materials.

Half of Fujitsu’s wafer capacityhas been stopped due to a lack ofwater and electricity.

EBV said it was “closely moni-toring” the effect on the supplychain, manufacturing and logisticsfrom its franchise partners.

“All vendors who operate facto-

ries in Japan are currently assess-ing the impact on their manufac-turing process,” said a statementfrom EBV. “Although a suppliermay not be physically impacted, itis likely there will be logistics chal-lenges outside of our control in the

short term. The extent of disrup-tions will become more and moreevident over the next few days andweeks.”

Geoff Brand, vice president ofmarketing at TTI, said there waslittle damage to its suppliers’ facto-ries but said there were infrastruc-ture problems.

“Electric power and water sup-ply services are down throughoutmany areas which could delayplant openings and hamper effortsto ship product out of the coun-try,” he said.• Infineon is donating E100,000to the Japanese Red Cross to help

Japan’s natural disaster victims.And the company’s Singaporeoffice is making arrangementsfor humanitarian aid (worthE100,000) in the form of bat-teries and drinking water for thecrisis region.

Licence extends Fujitsu’s Arm relationshipFUJITSU has signed a licenceagreement with Arm for IP prod-ucts. This will let Fujitsu offerplatforms using the latest Armtechnology including the Cortex-A15 processor, graphics IP andCorelink systems IP.

The two companies have beencollaborating for more than adecade. Last November, Fujitsulaunched its FM3 family of in-dustrial and general-purposemicrocontrollers based on theCortex-M3 processor.

The combination of compat-ible and scalable low-power pro-

cessor IP, including the recentlylaunched Cortex-A15 processorand fabric IP, will enable Fujitsuto provide its customers withcomplete, full function SoC plat-forms using Arm technology.

“Fujitsu is working to enhanceits product appeal and boost itsIP line-up,” said Fujitsu’s corpo-rate senior vice president Har-uyoshi Yagi. “One of the majorways in which we are doing sois through this comprehensivelicence agreement that we havesigned with Arm. This will a llowour customers to select the Armtechnology most suited for theirapplication, and use a platformthat combines it with other IP

that we have provided.”He said the platforms would

use Fujitsu’s proven design andauthentication technology, en-abling it to achieve high levels ofquality and functionality, as wellas a dramatic reduction in LSIdevelopment time.

“Fujitsu Semiconductor’s prod-ucts meet its customers’ needsin a timely manner over a widerange of applications,” he said.“We are already moving aheadwith the provision of IP to asiccustomers and the developmentof our own ASSPs, which arescheduled to be rolled out in the

second half of 2011.”Fujitsu plans to share its prod-

uct roadmap with Arm and close-ly collaborate in the developmentof future Arm technologies, fromthe specification stage onwards.

“As a strategic partner, welook forward to an even closerrelationship with Arm,” he said.

Tudor Brown, president ofArm, added: “In a constantlyevolving marketplace, Arm iscommitted to empowering itspartners with the resources theyneed to not only remain com-petitive today, but to meet futuretechnology challenges head-on.”

Fujitsu and Arm

sign licence

agreementFor nearly 30 years the world’s leading defence companies have trusted Green Hills

Software’s secure and reliable high performance software for mission-critical andsafety-critical applications.

From the Joint Tactical Radio System, through naval anti-surface missiles, to the F -35

Lightning II and Eurofighter Typhoon, Green Hills Software has been delivering proven

and secure underpinning technology.

To find out how the world’s most secure and reliable operating system and software

can take the risk out of your defence project, visit www.ghs.com/s4d

Copyright © 2011 Green Hills Software.Green Hills Software and the Green Hills logo are registered trademarks of Green Hills Software.All other product names are trademarks of their respective holders. U.S.Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class James R.Evans/Released.

TRUSTED SOFTWARE FOR DEFENCE

SECURE

RELIABLE

SAFE

http://www.ghs.com/


4/23

DeborahSweeney: “Wecan take youridea and make ithappen.”

Paul Kielty- White: “It isabout

giving them the technical buildingblocks.”

Robert Wainwright:“Between the

three of us we were able tobring it

together.”

Glen Jarrett: “Weare bringing to-

gether the hardware, softwareand production

versions of thesoftware.”


News

BVM restructures to attackM2M market

VM HAS formed a mobile di-sion to help it penetrate the

rowing machine-to-machineM2M) and mobile markets.

Called BVM Mobile, it willitially concentrate on four

roducts aimed at the M2Market, which the company be-eves is about to take off in ag way.And the company is collabo-

ating with Microsoft and RSomponents to help designersevelop products for this mar-

et using the BVM platforms.“There is a vast range ofarkets in which our products

an be used,” said BVM’s salesrector Deborah Sweeney.

The biggest area involvesheels, such as haulage, ship-ng, transport and so on. Se-

urity and surveillance is also ag area. Another area is digitalgnage. You can use our tech-ology in places where there iso fixed line; it provides yourobile office.”The entry-level product is theB100 mobile PC using an Inteltom D510 dual-core proces-

or. The scalable version is theB200 with a choice of Core, i5 or i7 processors, see page

1. The IKar is a dashboard-ountable PC that provides 3G

nd GPS and is aimed at the de-very industry. And the Icerocka tablet PC for mobile office

pplications.“If none of these meet your

quirements, we can produce a

complete custom design that isbuilt from the ground up,” saidSweeney, “from the concept lev-el through to production. It willexactly meet your requirements.We can take your idea and makeit happen.”

The arrangement with RSComponents and Microsoftmeans that users can purchasefrom RS a development boardwith a 120-day free trial ofWindows Embedded. This canthen be upgraded to a full ver-sion of Windows Embeddedand even to a full productionlicence.

“This is the first time Micro-soft has teamed up with a majordistributor such as RS in thisway,” said Robert Wainwright,general manager and directorof BVM. “It was a bit of anachievement. Between the threeof us we were able to bring it

together.”

Glen Jarrett, head of electron-ics marketing at RS Compo-nents, added: “We are bringingtogether the hardware, softwareand production versions of thesoftware.”

And Paul Kielty-White, part-ner technology manager at Mi-crosoft, said: “Windows Em-bedded lets our OEM customersmake almost bespoke products.It is about giving them the tech-nical building blocks to maketheir own systems.”

BVM is also working withWireless Logic, so that airtimecan be offered as part of thepackage.

To handle the new division,BVM has restructured the wayit operates including bringing inextra sales and marketing peo-ple on an outsourced basis. Thecompany is also about to openan office just outside Dublin to

cover all of Ireland.

Avago and Xilinx in

optical test

Masterclassrescheduled

INTEROPERABILITY testinghas been completed between Xil-inx Virtex-6 HXT FPGAs andAvago SFP+ and QSFP+ opticaltransceiver modules. The testingproves the design and interoper-ability of 10 and 40Gbit Ether-net ports using optical interfacesfrom Avago with the transceiverjitter performance of the FPGAs.

“Xilinx’s Virtex-6 HXT FPGAwith integrated GTH transceiv-ers was designed to meet the de-manding jitter requirements for

the 10Gbit/s optical interfaces,”said Nick Possley, director ofwired communications at Xilinx.“The superior jitter performanceenables us to support Avago’s10Gbit Ethernet SFP+ opticalmodule connectivity without theneed for external re-timers.”

He said that the proof of thateffort was evident in the com-pany’s ability to support 10GbitSFP+ Ethernet optical ports up to300m for 10GbaseSR using mod-ules from Avago.

Xilinx designed the GTH trans-ceivers in Virtex-6 HXT devicesto be optimised for demandingoptical interfaces.

THIS YEAR’S Embedded Mas-terclass has been rescheduled for5th October 2011 in Cambridge.

More details will be in the May

issue of MTE.

7News

Micro Technology Europe • April 2011

AAEON Technology Europe B.V.Ekkersrijt 4002, 5692 DA Son, The Netherlands

[email protected]

Tel: + 31 499 462 020

Fax: +31 499 462 010

www.aaeon.eu

IPC Number 1 Panel Computer

Industrial Grade Multi-Touch

Infotainment

ACP Series

Intel® Atom™ Dual Core D510 or Intel® Core™ 2 Duo on Board

Fanless & Slim Design

Water-Proof IP-65 & IPX1

Multi-Touch Wide Screen (16:9)

Anti-Scratch Front Bezel

G-Sensor for Vertical & Horizontal Reading

Applications:

Interactive Infotainment, Check-In System, Patient Data, …

21.5”/ 18.5”/ 15.6” Projected Capactive T/S

Streamlined Polished Chassis

Multi-Touch & G-Sensor

Slim Design

Only 56mm

Anders joins withCompulab

A STRATEGIC joint ventureaims to combine Anders Elec-tronics’ skills in developing userinterfaces (UIs) and Compulab’sability in core modules and ultra-miniature PCs.

Compulab is an Israeli manu-facturer of computer-on-moduleboards and miniature PCs. Theventure aims to expand the prod-uct range and value propositionthat the two companies can pro-vide European customers.

Anders will be providing moreresources for sales, support andmarketing channels.

Anders has supplied EuropeanOEMs with Compulab’s com andembedded motherboard tech-nologies for a number of years.More recently the company es-tablished a channel to supportgrowth of the Fit-PC family ofminiature, low-power, enclosed

industrial PCs.“Relationships are at the core

of everything Anders does and itis exciting to be able to take thesuccessful Compulab relation-ship to the next level,” said RobAnders, CEO of Anders.

A key focus for the ve nture willbe enhancing the Fit-PC valueproposition through the devel-opment of products for kiosksand other specific applications;integration with multi-touchmonitors; and the availability ofsoftware application bundles andadditional hardware peripherals.

Irad Stavi, Compulab’s directorof business development, said:“We look forward to building onthe success of this relationshipwith a venture that will add valueto our respective offerings whilestrengthening the sales and sup-port channel across the region.”

Compulab computer-on-modulefrom Anders, part of the range

covered by the venture

Industry moves on from recessionMOST ECONOMIES aroundthe world have fully recoveredfrom the 2008 to 2009 recession,and the majority of electronicsindustry segments are still ex-periencing strong but slowinggrowth, according to marketwatcher IPC.

In its recently released winter2011 edition of its quarterly busi-ness report, “Electronics Indus-tries Market Data Update”, IPCsays economically 2010 was abetter year than expected in mostparts of the world. Although Ja-pan experienced exceptionallyhigh growth in 2010, this wasthe year that China overtook Ja-

pan to become the second-largestworld economy after the USA.

“Markets are returning to nor-mal,” it says.

In North America, the top per-formers in year-on-year growthfor fourth quarter 2010 were PCBassembly equipment, flexible cir-cuits and the EMS industry.• The microcontroller market willlikely exceed a value of US$16bnfor 2011, according to Data-beans. The research company isexpecting 9% revenue growth.Databeans also projects that themarket for sensors and mems de-vices will reach nearly $11.1bn inglobal revenue for 2011.

http://www.aaeon.eu/http://www.aaeon.eu/http://www.cct.co.uk/


5/23


News

Vita sees mixed reactions tofinancial stability and political doubt

Digi-Key breaks salesrecord

HE TELECOMS market is set suffer in Europe due to re-

uced spending but this is beingountered by the rollout of LTE,ccording to Ray Alderman, ex-cutive director of Vita in his lat-t state of the industry report.Overall, he said that the eco-

omic situation worldwide hadabilised but the uprisings infrica and the Middle East wereroducing political uncertainty.The military market he be-

eves is looking healthy helpedy a policy of upgrading exist-g VME based systems. But hearned: “Commodity consumer

Cs made in China, counterfeithips, commodity PC softwarend commodity programmedPGAs have found their way intoitical military systems over the

years, as a result of inexpensivecommodity hardware and soft-ware being deployed, and lax se-curity oversight on military pro-gramme components.”

Both industrial and telecomsmarkets are showing low marginsfor hardware due to increases incommoditisation. The industrialsegment has proved fertile forsmall form factor computers andthis is now spreading into tele-coms.

“Stalwart form factors likePC/104 are now giving way tonewer, faster, more powerfulSFF form factors such as ComExpress,” said Alderman. “Com-petitively speaking, Asian boardvendors are challenging US andEuropean industrial board mak-ers, creating margin pressures.

LECTRONIC COMPONENTSstributor Digi-Key surpassedS$1.5bn in global sales for therst time in 2010, generating aalf-billion dollars in the fourthuarter alone. The record-settingtal represents a 64% year-over-

ear sales increase.Design engineers, equipmentanufacturers, innovators and

obbyists use Digi-Key for pro-type, design and production

uantities of electronic compo-ents. The company offers morean 1.8 million products fromore than 470 brand-name man-

facturers worldwide, as well as

engineering know-how, technicalexpertise and educational infor-mation to help customers.

“Our sales continue to growbecause of our unparalleled pres-ence online and immediate accessto products and information,”said Mark Larson, Digi-Key pres-ident and COO. “Our customersknow we have the products theywant and we deliver around theworld faster than anyone else.”

The largest annual 2010 salesgains over 2009 were in Europe(120%), Africa (118%), Asia-Pacific (115%) and the MiddleEast (78%).

The fragmented industrial IOsegment offers the best defenceagainst total commoditisation,particularly with mezzanine cardsand SFF cards using FPGAs.”

He welcomed the news thatspending on fab equipment looksset to rise this year but said theindustry should be wary of shortlife cycles on small-geometrysemiconductor products.

Market growth for medical ap-plications using embedded com-

puting devices was very bright,he said, but was being drivenhard by the demand for smaller,more mobile devices for home-based consumer medical equip-ment, fitness equipment, diseasemanagement, life monitoring andother wellness applications.

But he said medical equipment

makers were reacting to lowercost PC technology by producingmore specialised products to in-crease the amount of added valueand shore up margins.

“Highly integrated semicon-ductors and small form factorboards and systems will benefitthe most from the growing de-mand in wellness devices,” hesaid.

Finally, he welcomed the semi-conductor industry taking up the

challenge of bringing out moreoptical components.

“Optical technology will becritical to overcoming the physi-cal limitations of copper-basedinterconnect technology that ishindering performance of futureembedded computing systems,”he said.

Mark Larson: “Our

customers know we have

the products they want.”Bernina has selected Express Logic’s ThreadX rtos for use in its 830sewing and embroidery machine. Aimed at home users, the 830 ishighly programmable, delivering touch-screen programmability, graph-ics scalability and other advanced features.

Bernina chose the rtos because its small memory footprint canreside in limited on-chip MCU memory.

“As a provider of sewing and embroidery systems for a marketsegment with the uppermost performance demands, we rely on thestability and flexibility of the ThreadX operation system,” said Ralf

Wasserman, certified senior project manager for Bernina. “ThreadXprovides excellent real-time performance on the Arm 9 platform along

with being compact and versatile for add-on modules. These aspects together with a responsive development support makes it the os ofour choice.”

William Lamie, CEO of Express Logic, added: “Bernina’s 830 is evi-dence that technology is moving further and further into our everydaylives. It’s exciting to participate in this movement, and we’re proudand honoured that Bernina has chosen to use our ThreadX rtos for

this ingeniously innovative sewing machine.”

Stitch up for rtos

Support 2nd generation Intel® Core™ I7\I5\I3 processor

Mobile intel® QM67 chipset

2x204PIN DDR3 memory,up to 16GB

Adopts Intel® sandy bridge CPU internally integrated

graphic controller display chip, support DX10.1,Support

VGA+DVI,VGA+HDMI,VGA+Display port

DC 12V input

8xUSB2.0,4xSATA,1xHDA,1xGbE

MEC-7003

May 31-JUNE 4,2011

Industrial Fanless Atom™ N450/N470 Embedded PC

Supports Intel® Atom™ N470 1.83G/N450 1.66G

Supports 1 x 200-pin DDR2 SO-DIMM, up to 2GB

Supports 6 x USB, 4 x RS-232,2 x GbE, 1 x CF, 1 x 8-ch DIO

Supports 1 x PCI-104, 2 x Mini-PCIe

MEC-5006

EC5-1813L2NA

Industrial Fanless Dual-core Embedded Box PCTM

Onboard Intel® Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU

Supports 1 x DDR3 SO-DIMM 2G DDRIII

Memory,optional up to 4G

Supports:6xUSB,4xCOM,2xLAN,1xVGA,1xAudio,1xPCI,1xPCIe,1xMini-PCIe

5.25" Embedded SBC with Intel QM57 chipset & Multi-BUSTM

Supports Inte®l dual core Arrandale CPU i7-620M i5-520M

2 x DDR3 SO-DIMM Slots, up to 8GB DDR3 memory;Supports 8 x USB,6 x COM, 4 x SATAport,2 xLAN,1 x VGA,24bit 2ch LVDS,

1 x HDMI,1 x PCI/104-Express&PCIex4 &Mini-PCIe;

MEC-4005

EC7-1817LNAR

Intel ® i7/i5/i3 Mini-ITX SBCTM

Intel® Core i7, i5, i3 Processor

Up to 16GB DDR3 memory

Support VGA+LVDS VGA+HDMI VGA+DVI VGA+Display Port

EVOC launched the firstproduct with display port!EVOC launched the firstproduct with display port!

Display Port is a new digital display interface

standard put forth by the Video Electronics

Standards Association(VESA).

Display Port

http://www.review-displays.co.uk/http://www.evoc.com/


6/23


News

Linux Foundationpush on Meego

THE LINUX Foundation hasformed a Meego smart TV work-ing group. Meego is an opensource Linux project targetingmultiple segments including au-tomotive systems, netbooks,tablets, TVs and set-top boxes,among others, and uses Qt to en-able cross-device applications.

The working group is designedto help drive the evolution ofMeego within the televisionecosystem and provide an openframework for industry creativ-

ity and innovation.Early working group par-ticipants include Amino, Intel,

Jethead Development, Loca-tel, Mips Technologies, Nokia,Nokia Siemens Networks, SigmaDesigns, Telecom Italia, Videon

Central and Ysten.“Intel is working with leading

OEMs and service providers torevolutionise the TV industry,”said Keith Wehmeyer, generalmanager of the IPTV segment forIntel. “Meego smart TV will playa crucial role by providing a ro-bust framework for new devicesand services, and we’re lookingforward to helping provide high-performance processors neededfor media-rich applications anduser interfaces, as well as for

cross-device integration.”Working group members willdefine software components anda compliance programme as wellas focus on building an ecosys-tem of developers and contentproviders.

Cambridge Consultants picksCoverity for static analysis

Arm challenge at NEW

CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTShas selected Coverity Static Anal-ysis to automate code testing toidentify and eliminate criticaldefects in software code duringthe development process. Thisshould let it resolve software is-sues earlier.

“The decision to use Cover-ity’s solution is driven by ourneed to achieve the highest levelsof software quality in the rapiddevelopment timescales that ourclients require,” said Mark Wil-son from Cambridge Consul-

tants. “Automated code testingvia static analysis allows us to

ARM IS to sponsor thismonth’s National Elec-tronics Week at Birming-ham’s NEC from 12th to13th April.

Arm will challengeattendees to test theirdevelopment and racingskills at the MBed Ro-bot Racing competition.They will have to workagainst the clock to op-timise and race MBed-poweredrobots.

reduce timescales by identifyingissues early in the developmentcycle. Our decision to deployCoverity Static Analysis demon-strates our commitment to deliv-ering the highest quality productsto our customers and Coverity’sleading position in the market.Using Coverity is also key to oursuccessful business growth.”

The decision followed an eval-uation period. The top functionalrequirements were a technologythat could generate a high hit-rate in detecting the most critical

software bugs and low false-pos-itive rates.

“We are delightedto have Arm as an ex-hibitor and as our mainsponsor,” said ClaireSaunders, the show’sevent director. “Armis a leading light in theelectronics industry andat the heart of today’smost wanted high techproducts.”

A new feature will bethe addition of a brokerage standrun by ESP KTN.

ClaireSaunders: “Armis a leading lightin the electron-ics industry.”

Intel buys Sys DSoft to boost LTE

Göpel plans ninth technology day

INTEL, THROUGH its stand-alone business entity Intel MobileCommunications, has acquiredmost of the assets of Sys DSoft,a privately held software com-pany based in Cairo. The firmdesigns IP in the software stackand physical layer domain, andRF and analogue circuits embed-ded in mobile platforms.

About 100 of the company’selectrical engineers and computerscientists will move over to Intel.

“The acquisition of engineer-ing and design talent from anEgypt-based company in thefield of cutting-edge wireless andcommunications technology isthe first of its kind for Intel inthe Middle East,” said Arvind

Sodhani, executive vice president

GÖPEL ELECTRONICS willrun its ninth UK technology dayon 5th May 2011 in Duxford,Cambridgeshire. The seminarswill cover latest developments,applications and outlooks in

JTag and boundary scan, func-tional test and optical inspectiontechnologies.

During the day, Göpel andpartner companies will give pre-sentations, demonstrations andlive workshops. The companiesinclude Teradyne, Flying TestSystems, Reflex Technology, Fire-

of Intel. “The acquisition showsIntel’s continued long-term stra-tegic commitment to the regionand its appreciation of its young,growing talent pool.”

Sys DSoft’s products are usedin Intel’s multi-communicationsportfolio, specifically accelerat-ing its 4G LTE efforts with theaddition of software develop-ment and design capabilities.

“Intel is making the necessaryinvestments to further enhanceits existing world-class wirelessproduct portfolio and to offer themost reliable platforms to ourcustomers that will work seam-lessly across a range of globalnetworks,” said Hermann Eul,president of Intel Mobile Com-

munications.

cron, Aeroflex, Pickering Inter-faces, VTI Instruments, ThurlbyThandar Instruments, Accelonix,Mydata Automation and ZenProduction Equipment.

The event is focussed on elec-tronics design and productionrelated technologies and willprovide information for test en-gineers, design engineers andproduction managers.

These technology days are runby application engineers and arenot primarily planned to presentnew products.

11News


Display Solutions Digital Signage:Single Source, Multiple Options

The uniquely flexible digital signage plan

Lanner is one of Display Solutions’ trusted digital signage partners.

Its LEC embedded range offers high impact and low power solutions that deliver

stunning results from even the most demanding application.

Learn more from Display Solutions: www.displaysolutions.co.uk

email: [email protected] Tel: 01480 411600

LUGE: LEC-7800

Extremely rugged (-10°C to 55°C)Integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphicsWiFi/GPS/3G2 RCA audio outputDual Gigabit LAN

LUGE: LEC-7900

4 video out portsUltra-compact designUp to 4GB memoryFull Intel compatibilityScala approved

Alan Egan (16), who attends King Edward VI Camp Hill Boys Schoolin Birmingham , has won The Duke of York’s Award for the creativeapplication of electronics in the Young Engineer for Britain awards.The national final was held at the Big Bang Fair, which took place at

the ICC, London Excel, from 10th to 13th March. The event attractedabout 30,000 visitors.Egan, who was one of 46 national finalists in the competition,

designed a multimedia router, which facilitates the quick and easyrouting of multimedia content from various inputs to multiple outputdestinations using a simple and intuitive colour-based interface.

Among the other prize winners was Roxanne Pollard (19) fromChipping Sodbury School, Bristol, who designed a bicycle helmetincorporating special indicator safety features and has been invited torepresent Great Britain at the 2012 Intel-sponsored InternationalScience & Engineering Fair in America.

Multimedia router wins prizePicmg says yes torugged Micro TCA

PICMG HAS adopted MicroTCA.3, the hardened conductioncooled version of the Micro TCAspecification. This defines the re-quirements for systems that meetmore stringent levels of tempera-ture, shock, vibration and otherenvironmental conditions. Thiswill allow the development anddeployment of Micro TCA inmore rugged environments suchas outdoor telecoms, military,shipboard and other harsh mo-bile equipment environments.

One goal of the Micro TCA.3working group was to demon-strate the ability to meet extend-ed environmental requirements

including temperature, vibrationand shock. This was accom-plished by independent qualifica-tion testing of the connector anddocumented in reports availablefor viewing via the resources andconduction cooled Micro TCAlinks at www.picmg.org.

“Successful testing of the MicroTCA connector system based onrequirements from the MIL801and RTCA/DO-160 standardscombined with the adoptionof this new specification opens

harsher military and other rug-ged environments for MicroTCA,” said Doug Sandy, Picmg’svice president of tec hnology.

http://www.displaysolutions.co.uk/http://www.displaysolutions.co.uk/http://www.keil.com/arm


7/23

News


news in briefIttia ports DB to ThreadX Ittia has formed a technology alliance

with Express Logic leading to its

Ittia DB SQL being available for the

ThreadX operating system. DB SQL

is a relational embedded database for

special-purpose systems that require

self-contained data management soft-

ware. A free evaluation kit contains a

complete embedded database library

and support for both on-disk and in-

memory data management.

Imex lands Tektronix dealTektronix has appointed Imex Sys-

tems to provide pre- and post-sales

support across the UK for its prod-

ucts, including oscilloscopes, signal

generators, spectrum analysers, logic

analysers and bit error rate testers.The move comes as part of Tektron-

ix’s strategy to increase sales support

across the UK.

Licence deal markstenth birthday Green Hills Software is marking

the tenth anniversary of the first

customer deployment of its Integity-

178B rtos by offering it for the first

time as a prototyping licence. The

operating system will be available as

part of a complete rapid prototyping

kit that includes the Multi integrated

development environment, a JTag de-

bug probe and an operating system

licence.

Agilent delivers in Warsaw Agilent Technologies has delivered

and installed a 500GHz mm-wave

system at the Institute of Radio-Elec-

tronics, Warsaw University of Tech-

nology, Poland. The system, based

on the PNA-X series of microwave

network analysers, allows measure-

ments from 10MHz to 500GHz.

Göpel and DMPcooperate on x86Göpel Electronic has developed Vario

Tap IPs for testing Vortex x86 chip

series in cooperation with the Tai-

wanese company DMP. This will

enable the use of dynamic processor

emulation tests for fault detection

and diagnosis at board and system

level, additionally supporting embed-

ded flash bios programming.

Forum postponedFuture Horizons has postponed its

International Electronics Forum due

to be held in Morocco in May until

the autumn due to the recent events

in Japan.

people

Billon-Lanfrey to head Sofradir’s

Markopoulos rises at GE Intelligent Platforms

Jody Markopoulos has been named president and CEO ofGE Intelligent Platforms. She succeeds Maryrose Sylvesterwho has become president and CEO of GE Lighting.

Markopoulos, a 17-year GE veteran, has led the sourcingorganisation for GE Energy since 2005. She is responsiblefor the management and procurement of over US$16bn inmaterials and services worldwide and leads a 1300-person global team.

Markopoulos came to GE after graduating from Clarkson University inNew York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary engineer-ing and management. Today she serves on the Dean’s Leadership Council forthe Wallace H Coulter School of Engineering at Clarkson.

Movement at Intel’s

mobility group

Anand Chandrasekher, senior VPand general manager of Intel’s UMGultra mobility group, is leaving Intelto pursue other interests.

Mike Bell, vice president of Intel’sIAG architecture group, and DaveWhalen, vice president of IAG, willco-manage UMG.

“Intel remains committed to thisbusiness,” said David Perlmutter,

executive vice president and IAGgeneral manager. “We continue tomake the investments needed toensure that the best user experienceon smartphones and handhelds runson Intel architecture, and to ship aphone this year.

All change at STM

Burns’ flight

to Sarsen

Sarsen Technol-ogy has appointedRobbie Burnsas sales accountmanager in theUK. Previously, he was field salesmanager for Acal Technology andhas worked for many years in bothengineering and sales for technologycompanies.

Veteran moves

from Cisco to

Mips

Dave Singhal hasjoined Mips Tech-nologies as VP ofcorporate develop-ment and strategy. He has more than20 years experience with both early-stage and established companies.

He joins from Cisco, where he wasa director in the corporate develop-

ment and strategy organisation.Prior to Cisco, Singhal was found-

ing CEO at Luxxon.Before that, he held engineering

roles at Neomagic, Trident Micro-systems, Cirrus Logic and AdvancedMicro Devices.

ST Microelectronics has madechanges at executive managementlevel, starting with Fabio Gualandrisrejoining as corporate vice presidentresponsible for product-quality mat-ters throughout the company’s op-erations.

Gualandris takes the position pre-viously held by Georges Auguste,who has been appointed executiveVP for packaging and test manufac-turing. He will officially take overin May following a brief transitionfrom Jeffrey See, who is to retire fol-lowing 41 years with the company.

Claudia Levo has also joined totake up the position of corporateVP of communications. He waspreviously senior vice president andhead of global communications forST-Ericsson. Levo steps in followingthe recent death of Carlo Ottaviani.

Loic Lietar, executive vice presi-

dent of new ventures, will managea recently set-up organisation toinvestigate new areas of potentialstrategic interest.

Philippe Lambinet has taken re-sponsibility for the strategic func-tions formerly managed by Lietar.

commentPatience and understanding

time before it is business as usual. Even when andif all the factories are working again, there are stillserious supply line problems and some factories thathave started operations may have to close again asthey struggle to source raw materials.

For those in the west dealing with Japanese part-ners, the two key words must be patience and un-derstanding, patience in giving our Japanese friendstime to recover and understand-ing at the difficulties they facein doing so. Where we can, weshould help them through thisand look forward to the daywhen our working relationshipscan be resumed in full.

Steve Rogerson

technology department

David Billon-Lanfrey has taken over as vice-president ofR&D, technology and products for Sofradir, replacingPhilippe Tribolet who died November 2010 aged 51. Sof-radir makes infra-red detectors for military, space and in-dustrial applications.

As the head of the technology department Billon-Lanfrey will oversee ateam of 100 that includes engineers in metallurgy, semiconductor materials,microelectronics, optoelectronics, micromechanics, cryogenics and otherspecialty areas in physics and chemistry.

There are times when a natural disaster is soimmense that it overshadows everythingelse that we do, and there is no doubt that

the recent events in Japan fall into that category.There can be hardly anybody who has not beenmoved as the tragedy unfolded on television andin the newspapers, and it may be some time for t hefull extent of what has happened to be revealed.

What has been impressive in the wake is the waythe Japanese people have rallied around and knuck-led down to try to bring some semblance of nor-mality back into their society, and the electronicsindustry has played its part in that as engineers havebeen moved from their normal companies to helprepair infrastructure and manufacturing plants have

worked hard to bring production back on line.But, as we report on page four, it may be a long

13Diary


diary datesSoftware Safety Workshop5th April 2011Londonwww.scsc.org.uk

Printed Electronics & Photovoltaics5th-6th April 2011Dusseldorf, Germanywww.idtechex.com/dusseldorf

Exploiting the Informatics Potential5th-7th April 2011Birmingham, Englandwww.hcshowcase.org

Electro Test Expo7th April 2011Milton Keynes, UKwww.electrotestexpo.co.uk

IPC Apex Expo

10th-14th April 2011Las Vegas, USAwww.ipcapexexpo.org

Autotronics12th-15th April 2011Taipei, Taiwanwww.autotronics.com.tw

National Electronics Week12th-13th April 2011Birmingham, UKwww.neweventsltd.com

DSEi13th-16th September 2011Londonwww.dsei.co.uk

Electronica India13th-16th September 2011New Delhiwww.electronica-india.com

LED Professional Symposium27th-29th September 2011Bregenz, Austriawww.led-professional-symposium.com

MM Live27th-29th September 2011Birmingham, UKwww.mmliveuk.com

Embedded Masterclass5th October 2011Cambridge, UKwww.embedded-masterclass.com

Taitronics10th-13th October 2011

Taipei, Taiwanwww.taitronics.tw

Sophia AntipolisMicroelectronics Forum12th-13th October 2011Sophia Antipolis, Francewww.same-conference.org

ElectronicAsia13th-16th October 2011Hong Kongelectronicasia.com

RFID World Asia12th-15th April 2011Singaporewww.terrapin.com/2011/rfid

The Gadget Show Live13th-17th April 2011Birmingham, UKwww.gadgetshowlive.net

Mobile Research Conference18th-19th April 2011Londonwww.mobileresearchconference.com

Embedded Systems Conference2nd-5th May 2011San Jose, Californiaesc-sv09.techinsightsevents.com

PCIM Europe

17th-19th May 2011Nuremberg, Germanywww.pcim.de

Computex31st May-4th June 2011Taipei, Taiwanwww.computextaipei.com.tw

Embedded Systems Conference6th-8th June 2011Chicagoesc-chicago.techinsightsevents.com

AMD Fusion Developer Summit13th-16th June 2011Bellevue, Washingtonwww.amd.com

Energy Harvesting & Storage21st-22nd June 2011Munich, Germanywww.idtechex.com/munich

PCIM Asia21st-23rd June 2011Shanghai, Chinawww.pcim-asia.com

Digital Manufacturing22nd-24th June 2011Fort Lauderdale, Floridawww.imiconf.com

Consumer Electronics Conference5th July 2011Londonwww.intellectuk.org

Embedded Systems Conference

20th-22nd July 2011Bangalore, Indiawww.esc-india.com

Flash Memory Summit9th-11th August 2011Santa Clara, Californiawww.flashmemorysummit.com

Gamescon17th-21st August 2011Cologne, Germanywww.gamescom-cologne.com

http://www.review-displays.co.uk/http://www.runcore.com/


8/23

15


Steve

Rogerson

presents a

round-up of

some of the

highlights at

Embedded World in

Nuremberg last

month

15


>

“ AMD has not been very active in embeddedmarkets for a while, but AMD is back again

”HERE WAS little surprise ate show that the battle betweenMD and Intel would take centreage following AMD’s renewedush on the embedded marketith the G series and the releasef Intel’s Sandy Bridge line of sec-nd-generation Core processors. fact, AMD took the battle aage further at the show withe launch of three low-power

rocessors.

The added CPUs are aimed ateeply embedded or headless sys-ms for environments without a

screen, monitor or input deviceand that don’t require graphicsto take advantage of the BobcatCPU core. These processors areavailable in 5 and 18W powerbands and provide computation-al features such as out-of-orderexecution, a high-performancefloating point unit, across-the-board 64bit capability and multi-core options.

“The G series has allowed us to

drive more compelling productsin markets where we have alwaysbeen but it also lets us enter new

markets such as in-vehicle enter-tainment with streaming video,”said Buddy Broeker, director ofembedded at AMD. “These CPUonly versions will be targeted forhome and SMB storage, indus-trial controls and automation,single board computers, and tele-coms and networking.”

AMD also added a systems andtechnology track to its Fusionpartner programme. The track

will provide embedded engineerswith tools, training and technicalresources to quicken the pace of

development.“We want to help our partners

grow their business because asthey grow, we grow,” said DavidKenyon, AMD corporate vice-president. “Our partners say theyneed the support to help themgrow their business. We will givethem marketing tools that helpexplain why AMD is better thanthe competition.”

Dirk Finstel, CTO at Kon-

tron, said: “AMD is back withthe embedded G series.” But thecompany’s vice-president of mar-

AMD increases pressure on Intel with follow-up launch

keting Norbert Hauser admitted:“Our focus is on the Intel coreplatforms, but with AMD’s G

series we have introduced a ComExpress compact product.”

With Direct X 11 and Open GL3.2 support, integrated UVD 3.0and long-term availability, theKontron Com Express compactMicro ETX Express-OH is forsmall form factor applicationsthat require high-performance,high-speed graphics to producefluid, high-resolution image andvideo displays. It is scalable infour stages over the bandwidthof the G series APUs: from the1.2GHz T44R single-core APUand Radeon HD6250 GPU upto the 1.6GHz dual-core variantT56N with Radeon HD6310.

Hauser added: “The G seriesopens up new application areassuch as mobile medical imagingand software defined radio.”

Gina Lin, Europe countrymanager for Jetway, said: “AMDwill make inroads into Intel’smarket for embedded solutions.AMD now has a long availability

roadmap.”She said that using Intel chips

and Nvidia’s Ion 2 involved threechips.

“That limits what else youcan do on the board,” she said.“Now with AMD you can doa two-chip solution so there isroom for more features and thethermal challenge is not as muchof a problem.”

She said that the AMD chipwould suit digital signage ap-plications, “but when you re-ally need CPU power, then go forSandy Bridge”.

Congatec was one of the firstcompanies to announce a prod-uct using the G series in January

on a Com Express board and fol-lowed this up at the show withmodules in the ETX and XTX

sizes but nothing so far to thefirm’s much championed Q Sevenstandard.

“The one missing is Q Seven,”said Christian Eder, marketingmanager. “This is not yet on ourroadmap for AMD, but let’s seewhat the future holds. It is in dis-cussion as to whether we do a Q

Seven with AMD, maybe on anupcoming version of the G se-ries.”

He acknowledged that most ofCongatec’s products were Intelbased but said this was because“AMD has not been very activein the embedded market for awhile, but AMD is back again.This closes the gap with the IntelAtom and Core processors.”

He said that the G series hadan “excellent performance perwatt ratio and extremely goodgraphics performance”.

Nick Jarmany, managing direc-tor of gaming company Quixant,said: “The key feature of the Gseries we like is the high perfor-mance graphics on two screens.A lot of slot machines have twoscreens and they need the goodgraphics to attract people tothem.”

He said though the low powerconsumption was not an issue forbattery length in this industry, itwas important in reducing heat,especially in places where therewere banks of gaming machines.

Peter Hoser, director of OEMsales at Fujitsu, agreed. He said:“We need the high graphics per-

formance to drive two monitors.It is good to have one platform tosuit different requirements.”

A number of companies thoughare sticking with Intel, especiallywith the launch of the second-generation Core products – theSandy Bridge range.

“Sandy Bridge is really impor-

tant because of the multiple coresand the improved graphics,” saidWolfgang Eisenbarth, directorof marketing at MSC Vertriebs.“It doubles the graphics perfor-mance. It is a high end proces-sor.”

He said that AMD would com-pete but on lower power applica-tions. “The AMD chip is lowerperformance,” he said.

Yi-Jin Huang, Aaeon’s engi-neer for marketing, added: “TheAMD G series is not yet in ourplan. We are though meetingthem soon to discuss things butwe don’t have a plan yet . We arethough working on the second-generation Intel Core and will belaunching a product in June.”

Adlink does not believe thateven for gaming AMD can pro-vide what it needs.

“We have looked at the AMDG series for gaming,” said JeffMunch, Adlink’s chief technicalofficer, “but we are focussed onthe high-end gaming sector so weuse the Intel Core with a separatevideo controller. The video is im-

portant because it is the mecha-nism to get you to the game.”

He said that the company did

not see a compelling reason to goto the AMD process or.

“It is not part of our productstrategy,” he said. “We are verymuch an Intel centric companyand Intel can address our needsso we see no reason to look out-side. All our new products arebased on the latest products from

Intel, whether the latest Atom orthe high-end Sandy Bridge.”

Another company firmly in theIntel camp is Concurrent Tech-nology and it followed up its firsttwo boards using the new proces-sors in January with the launchat the show of two more boardsusing a choice of i5 or i7 proces-sors – the TP 86x/39x single-slotair-cooled 3U Compact PCI SBC

and the AM 31x/x0x AdvancedMC processor board aimed attelecoms applications.

“The AMC board is an upgradefrom an existing card,” said JaneAnnear, Concurrent’s commercialdirector. “It will be for commer-cial and extended temperaturesbut not for rugged.”

The CPCI board is also an up-grade aimed at transportation,industrial and military applica-tions.

The company has not beentempted by the AMD launch.Annear said: “Our concern withAMD is the length of the life cy-cle. Intel lives up to its seven yearlife cycle.”

uddy Broeker: “The Gries has let us drive more

ompelling products.”

Norbert Hauser: “Our focusis on the Intel coreplatforms.”

Jane Annear: “Intel lives up to its seven year life cycle.”

Christian Eder: “Q Sevenis not yet on our roadmapfor AMD.”

Yi-Jin Huang: “The AMD Gseries is not yet in our plan.

David Kenyon: “We want tohelp our partners grow theirbusiness.”

Peter Hoser: “It is good tohave one platform to suitdifferent requirements.”

Gina Lin: “AMD will makeinroads into Intel’s market

Jeff Munch: “Intel canaddress our needs so we seeno reason to look outside.”

Nick Jarmany: “We like thehigh performance graphicson two screens.”


9/23


HE ARM bandwagonat has been gaining mo-entum for the past year

ontinued to roll forwardnd it was hard to strollound the exhibition with-ut tripping over yet an-ther announcement. Therm crowd themselvesere understandably on at of a high with this state

f affairs as could be seenom the smiling faces on

eir stand.“What we are seeingom the major semicon-uctor firms is they cansten on the Arm partner-

hip and have somethingr all their component

eeds,” said Chris Turner,rm’s product market-g manager. “There iso other company in oureld that has the breadthe have.”He said that Microsoft’s

nnouncement of plan-ng to port Windows torm platforms was keyr the company’s opti-ism.“This is one of the biggest com-

anies in the world embracing therm architecture,” he said. “PlusXP has stated their roadmap is

oing to be totally Arm.”One of the major introductionsthe show came from Xilinx

ith its Zynq-7000 extensible

rocessor platform based on anrm Cortex-A9 dual-core pro-ssor with integrated 28nm pro-

rammable logic.Each device is a processor-based

ystem, capable of booting an op-ating system from reset with therogrammable logic accessible.enables system architects and

mbedded software developers topply a combination of serial andarallel processing to applicationsat require high levels of perfor-ance, while at the same time

enefiting from higher integration a way to reduce cost, power

nd size.“We believe this is radically dif-rent from what we have seen

before with FPGA technology,”said Glenn Steiner, Xilinx’s seniormanager for embedded process-ing. “Many products today haveexternal processor and FPGA asa two-chip solution, but this is acombined processor system in-cluding memory.”

There are initially four partsin the family with the number oflogic cells ranging from 30,000 to235,000. Early samples are ex-pected by the end of the year withgeneral availability late in 2012.

ST Microelectronics extendedits 32bit STM32L series of mi-crocontrollers using the Arm Cor-tex-M3. The expansion meansthe family now includes deviceswith memory densities of 256and 384kbyte, thereby offering aflash memory range from 32 upto 384kbyte for embedded appli-cation engineers. The first deviceswith 64 and 128kbyte memorydensities were expected to beavailable in production by the end

of March. MCUs with 32kbytememories will follow later in thespring.

The company is aiming theseat healthcare applications and itsUSB drivers are ready for use inContinua Health Alliance appli-cations, but STM believes it has

learnt lessons on robustness fromits experience in the automotivemarket.

“The robustness is derivedfrom our automotive qualifiedprocess,” said Stéphanie Ordan,marketing manager for STM’s mi-crocontroller division. “We wantto address healthcare as that is ahuge market for us.”

The products also use whatthe company calls its just-enoughenergy concept. For example, at1.8V the performance can be upto 235µA/DMips at 32MHz.

“The user though can decide toreduce the normal voltage appliedto the core and can thus reducepower consumption,” explained

Orden.So at 4MHz and 1.2V,

the performance dropsto 171µA/DMips andat 16MHz and 1.5V theperformance is 200µA/ DMips.

Freescale Semiconduc-tor announced the latestaddition to its growingKinetis 32bit microcon-troller line – the KinetisK50 family. This fam-

ily, aimed at medical andindustrial applications,expands the company’sportfolio built on theArm Cortex-M4 core.The K50 family providesmultiple connectivityoptions for continuousmonitoring and an in-tegrated measurementengine for processing ofanalogue signals for ap-plications such as por-table medical devices,signal instrumentationand industrial test andmeasurement equipment.

“We can target a lot ofapplications in the medi-

cal market,” said Bruno Baylac,Freescale’s director of metering,medical and connectivity. “Forexample, blood glucose meteringis a high-volume market and isexpected to grow rapidly. Anoth-er important market is the smartgrid.”

Freescale has announced asmart meter reference designbased on its earlier 32bit KinetisMK30X MCU.

Toshiba expanded its range ofdevices and tools for motion con-trol applications with a compactand integrated Cortex-M3 micro-controller to improve applicationperformance and efficiency whilereducing component count andboard space. The 32bit TMPM-374FW IC was launched with adedicated starter kit that providesall the hardware, software anddocumentation needed for imme-diate device evaluation and rapiddevelopment and prototyping.

“This is part of a family of de-

Arm on high as companiesrush to back architecture

17


>

vices to control brushless DC mo-tors,” said Andreas Kohl, seniormanager at Toshiba’s Europeandesign centre in Dusseldorf. “Thisis for the latest energy saving mo-tors and requires quite sophisti-cated control algorithms.”

Energy Micro extended itsEFM32 Gecko microcontrollerfamily with a Cortex-M0 line– called Zero Gecko – and hasimproved the performance of its

Chris Turner: “There is noother company in our field

with the breadth we have.”

Wolfgang Eisenbarth: “Inteland Arm are bothcompetitive on this.”

Stéphanie Ordan: “We want to address healthcare as thatis a huge market for us.”

Bruno Baylac: “We can target a lot of applications in the medical market.”

Glenn Steiner: “This isradically different from what

we have seen before.”

Andreas Kohl: “This requiresquite sophisticated controlalgorithms.”

upcoming Cortex-M3 based TinyGecko devices.

The firm also announced detailsof its forthcoming EFR energyfriendly radio family also using theCortex-M0 core. Called EFR4DDraco, the system-on-chip radioswill achieve receive and transmitcurrent consumption down to 5and 6mA, respectively.

MSC Vertriebs is backing Armand Intel by going with the Q Sev-

en baseboard specification thatwill allow a board to be designedso that processors from eithercompany can be added later.

“With Com Express, you haveto change the complete design ifyou move from Intel to Arm,”said Wolfgang Eisenbarth, mar-keting director at MSC Vertriebs.“But with Q Seven you can pickthe format and decide on the pro-cessor later.”

The company can produce QSeven boards using either theNvidia Tegra 290 Arm CPU withdual-core Cortex A9 or with theIntel Tunnel Creek Atom range.

“Intel and Arm are both com-petitive on this,” said Eisenbarth.“Arm and Intel can really com-pete on the best solution. Armcan’t compete on Windows at themoment, but that is now chang-ing.”

Jan Lohstroh with the latest

Strategic Research Agenda

THE ARTEMIS Industrial Associ-ation adopted an updated versionof its Strategic Research Agendaduring a meeting at the show. Thelast time this had been revised wasin 2006 and the latest version laysout the organisation’s strategy forthe next five years.

“This document should be lead-ing the EC funded programmesin Europe,” said Jan Lohstroh,secretary general of the organisa-tion. “It gives a mission strategyof what needs to be done in thefuture.”

Due to be formally launchedin Brussels in May, the 60-pagedocument has addressed the in-creased networking ability of em-bedded systems.

“Embedded systems are becom-ing the neural system of society,”said Lohstroh. “All our systemshave to work together and thereis a lot of room for standardisa-tion.”

“We are working on stan-dards,” said Lohstroh. “We wanta standard to harmonise existingstandards.”

Artemis in five-year plan

John Carbone: “People buyThreadX because it is very fast.”

Andre Vander Stichelen: “Our goal is to become number three is scopes.”

TO OVERCOME the problemof applications where memory

is tight, Express Logic has rede-signed its ThreadX rtos in a waythat just the basic part of theoperating system resides in thememory and the rest is accessedvia downloadable modules asand when needed.

“We put an interface roundthe basic operating system,” said

John Carbone, vice president ofmarketing. “Then you can time-share the remaining parts in thememory. The modules can beon an external memory such asa disk or they can be brought inover a network.”

Applications can thus gain in-creased functionality without thecost of an increased footprint oradditional memory. This tech-nique also provides on-demandreconfiguration and applicationupdates for deployed systems.

For those worried about speed,a crucial factor in small operat-ing systems such as this, Carbonesaid that it did not work by con-

stantly accessing the modules butby bringing them in maybe oncea day or even longer.

“It is every once in a while thatyou need to extend the capabil-ity,” he said. “Bigger oses tend tohave this but they tend to be slowanyway. People buy ThreadX be-cause it is very fast so a slow in-terface is not tolerable. We havecome up with a way that makesthe interface faster by mappingthe os services so they can be ac-cessed without going through theinterface.”

This kernel-module structureis commonly found in operatingsystems such as Windows and Li-nux, and in larger rtoses, such as

VxWorks and QNX.The modules are collections of

application threads, not linkedwith the kernel, but are insteadloaded into target memory anduse kernel services via an inter-face with the module manager,resident within the kernel. Thisinitiates a module as well asfields and interfaces all modulerequests for API services.

Although there is only onecopy of the module manager,there are no limits on the numberof modules that can be loaded atthe same time, and no limits onthe number of threads in any onemodule. In this manner, the ker-nel becomes a distinct executionentity, running continuously toserve module requests.• Support has been added toThreadX for Renesas RX60032bit microcontrollers. TheMCUs also provide broad con-nectivity with integrated Ether-net, USB and other high-speedinterfaces, which are supportedby Express Logic’s NetX TCP/IPand USBX host-device stacks.

Downloadable modulesextend reach of rtos

ROHDE & Schwarz made itsdebut appearance at the showto push the firm’s entry last yearinto the oscilloscope market.

“We have developed a go-to-market strategy to get it know

Rohde & Schwarz aims

for bronze in scopesthat we do scopes,” said AndreVander Stichelen, director ofsales and business development.“We are here to promote that.We have our ‘Scope of the Art’buttons and our own scope website. We are trying to becomeknown to customers who don’tknow we do scopes.”

He said the goal was to be-come the number three in oscil-loscopes behind Tektronix andAgilent, displacing LeCroy fromthat spot.

“We don’t know whether thiswill take three or five years,” saidStrichelen.


10/23


MICROSOFT USED the show tonnounce the general availabilityf Windows Embedded Compactthe next generation of its wide-adopted Windows Embedded

E platform. And it was backedy board support packages (BSPs)om a variety of embedded com-anies, many of which had dem-nstrations running the software.“It has been in beta for us tofine and improve and focus onarket readiness,” said Lorraine

Bardeen, marketing manager forWindows Embedded. “From amarket readiness standpoint, wefocussed on BSP readiness. Thereare now many platforms fromwhich people can choose.”

She said that Microsoft hadinvested in the ecosystem to en-sure that BSPs were ready fromthe start.

“They are available now run-ning Windows Embedded Com-pact 7,” she said. “You can order

these immediately. They will helpreduce the time to market andreduce the development costs.Customers want to focus on theapplication and they love that itis ready to go.”

Olivier Fontana, director atWindows Embedded, added:“We introduced Windows Em-bedded Compact 7 today andtoday you can purchase boardsusing this.”

One company that has boardsis Kontron, and its CTO DirkFinstel said: “We will ship BSPsfor this in the next few weeks.”

“We did this with Kontron toreduce the time to market for our

OEMs,” said Fontana.He stressed the importance of

the ecosystem of which Kontronis part.

“The Windows Embedded eco-system has more than 700 part-ners globally and Europe contrib-utes 40% of them,” he said.

Silverlight for Windows Embed-ded, an application framework in-cluded with Compact, combines

the flexibility of declarative userinterfaces with the performanceof native code. It is based on Sil-verlight v3.0 and allows develop-ers and designers to create andupdate device user interfaces us-ing Microsoft Expression Blend.

Compact also includes an up-dated Internet Explorer, built onthe same core as IE in MicrosoftWindows Phone 7 and includessupport for Flash 10.1, panningand zooming, multi-touch, and

viewing bookmarks using thumb-nails.

“And Windows EmbeddedCompact 7 now supports Arm v7architecture,” said Bardeen. “Andit also supports SMMP for thefirst time.”

Demonstrations at the showranged from a home energy gate-way being shown by Freescalethrough a print mark detectorfrom Beckhoff to an eyeball sen-sor that can let people scroll acomputer screen by moving theireyes.

“We are seeing a huge amountof innovation in the medicalspace,” said Bardeen.

BSPs ready as EmbeddedCompact 7 becomes available

19


>

Olivier Fontana: “We introduced Windows Embedded Compact 7 today and today you can purchaseboards using this.”

orraine Bardeen: “Customersve that it is ready to go.”

ADVANTECH HAS set itselfa target of increasing world-wide revenues from last year’sUS$670m to over $1bn in 2013by increasing its focus on verti-cal markets such as medical andtransportation.

“The important sector is em-bedded computers,” said How-ard Lin, managing director of thecompany’s European operations.“This has seen a very high growthin the past year. We are gainingbig customers, the OEM custom-ers.”

In medical, he said the firm al-ready had good penetration andsaid this was about to increase.

“Most hospitals are still doingthings in the traditional way,” hesaid. “In the future, they will up-grade to be more computer based.

All the hospitals will go this way.We see this as a big opportunity,especially in Europe.”

Though the intention is formost of the growth to be organic,Lin has not ruled out more acqui-sitions such as it did last year withGerman company DLog in the in-dustrial and in-vehicle computingbusiness and UK firm Innocore inthe gaming sector. But key in allsectors, he said, was providing atotal package.

“We try to work with our eco-system partners such as Intel andMicrosoft,” he said. “We like toprovide the total of hardware,software and components. Andwe can do customisation.”

Howard Lin: “We are gaining bigcustomers.”

Mario Willeit: “Everything can bechanged over software.”

Advantech

sets growthtarget

THANKS TO technology gainedwhen it acquired Fyrestorm in2008, Exar has introduced a dig-ital programmable power con-troller that can compete on pricewith analogue devices.

“The price is equivalent toanalogue,” said Mario Willeit,senior field application engineer.“You need this for competitivemarkets like set-top boxes.”

Part of the Power XR fam-ily, the XRP7724 has expandedvoltage and current ranges, SMBus interface and independentlycontrolled channel frequencies.Applications span mobile to in-

dustrial to high-performancecomputing.

Using the Power Architect de-

sign tool, engineers can modifyvoltage, current, GPIO or otherparameters in seconds. Engineers

Flexibility key for power controllercan tweak design parametersthroughout the design cycle,qualification into final test andeven when deployed in the field.

“Because it is digital, it doesnot change over time or tem-perature,” said Willeit. “It is alsoflexible in that everything can bechanged over software.”

The firm’s digital pulse fre-quency modulation technologylowers standby current enablingsystem designers to meet greenpower requirements.

Input voltage range is 4.75to 25V and output range 0.6 to5.1V, with a built-in LDO for

standby power, power sequenc-ing capability and integrated gatedrivers.

Eliane Forgeau: “The next step willbe to support Autosar 4.0.”

AlexanderBuravlev

Michael Vierhellig

ENGINEERS AT Dassault Sys-tèmes are working hard to inte-grate the products it gained when

it bought Geensoft last year. Andone could forgive Eliane Forgeauif she was a little confused as shewore a different hat for the thirdEmbedded World in a row.

Two years ago, she was rep-resenting Geensys. At last year’sshow, she was CEO of Geensoft,a company created by a manage-ment buyout of the tools vendorbusiness of Geensys. This year,she was the catalyst systems salesmanager for Dassault.

She explained how progresswas being made in integratingGeensoft into Dassault, startingwith Reqtify, Geensoft’s flagshiptool suite.

“Reqtify will stay as a stand-

alone product,” she said, “but itwill also be embedded into Das-sault’s V6 framework. That willcome this year. We reckon Reqtifywill be integrated by mid-June.”

However, integrating the Au-tosar Builder and Control Buildapplications may take longer.

Dassault on quest tointegrate Geensoft

PICMG MADE the official launchof the short-form specificationsfor Compact PCI Serial and Com-pact PCI Plus IO, which combinesthe parallel Compact PCI withCompact PCI Serial.

The hope is that the higher

bandwidth capabilities of the se-rial specification will increase itsuse in telecoms applications.

“Compact PCI Serial will com-pete with Micro TCA in telecomsaccess and edge applications,”said Alexander Buravlev fromFastwel. “It is designed to be costcompetitive with VPX, MicroTCA and Advanced TCA.”

And Michael Vierhellig fromIntel added: “I see it as the logicalsuccessor to PCI Express. Com-pact PCI Serial will be the base forthe next ten years.”

One of the first companies toreveal products supporting thestandard was MEN Mikro withthe G20 series of SBCs.

Picmg ratifiesCompact PCI

Serial

TOSHIBA WAS demonstratinga breakthrough in touch screentechnology that allows multi-

touch operation using resistivetouch techniques rather than themore expensive capacitive touch.The company hopes this willbroaden the spread of multi-pointtouch screens in industrial andmedical applications.

The system uses an algorithmto combine the benefits of resis-tive and capacitive touch sensorswhile overcoming limitations witheach of these technologies.

“We have a software algorithmthat can distinguish two points oftouch and follow the position ofyour finger,” said Andreas Kohl,senior manager at Toshiba’s Euro-pean design centre in Dusseldorf.“We have a patent pending on

Multi-touch usingresistive technology

this. It was developed in our engi-neering centre in Japan.”

He said the technology would

approximately halve the cost ofmulti-touch screens, though thereis a size limit on the screens. Itdoes not work particularly wellat screen sizes above 25cm but isideal at about 12 to 15cm.

Resistive touch screens can ac-cept pen, stylus and gloved inputsbut not typically multi-touch.Toshiba’s demonstration showeda resistive touch screen that couldinterpret multi-touch gestures.It used an Arm 9 developmentboard for the touchpad and dis-play with a PCB that amplified thetouch stimulus and calculated po-sition and movement. The hopeis the technology will be ready tointroduce later this year.

Combining the benets

of resistive and capacitive

touch sensors

ALLEON EMBEDDED Com-uting introduced a four-channeligabit Ethernet recorder and di-

ct attached storage (DAS) unitOpen VPX format.Galleon was founded in 2009

y disgruntled VMetro employ-

ees after their company was ac-quired by Curtiss-Wright.

“Curtiss-Wright downsized

massively after they boughtVMetro,” said Espen Bøch, Gal-leon’s vice president of sales andmarketing. “There were a lotof redundancies. Some of themformed this company.”

He said the firm had tried notto compete directly with Curtiss-Wright but find its own niche.

“We are concentrating onsmall, rugged storage systems,”he said. “These are our primaryfocus.”

The XSR recorder is targetedat mobile applications such asUAVs and vehicles. The Titan3U Open VPX DAS expands thefirm’s line of 3U Open VPX stor-age devices.

Galleon sales on withrugged storage

spen Bøch: “We areoncentrating on small, ruggedorage systems.”


11/23


21


GROWING APPLICATIONSin smart metering and medicalmarkets are the main targets forthe FT232H USB2.0 high-speeddevice introduced by FTDI. Thissingle channel USB to uart/fifointerface can be configured viaeeprom to use different serial orparallel interfaces.

“We are seeing more applica-tions in smart metering for gas,water and so on,” said Ian Dunn,FTDI’s engineering manager.

“We are also seeing medical ap-plications such as with blood glu-cose measurement devices. Thereis more monitoring of patients.”

He said the company was see-ing new applications almost on adaily basis.

“And we lose sight of a lot ofapplications through the distri-bution channel as you don’t seethe end user,” he said.

Bundled with FTDI’s USB de-vice drivers, the device lets engi-neers add USB connectivity intonew and legacy peripheral de-signs. The associated UM232Hevaluation module allows engi-neers to prototype and tests thedevice’s suitability for incorpo-

ration into designs. This devicecontroller contains USB, serialand parallel protocol engines,eliminating any requirement forUSB specific firmware develop-ment.

The device supports IO inter-face levels of 3.3V with 5V toler-ant inputs, making it suitable forconnection to a wide variety oflogic, MPUs and FPGAs.

As well as supporting asyn-chronous serial (uart) interfac-

ing, it also supports interfacesto many synchronous IOs suchas SPI, I2C, JTag and FPGA pro-gramming interfaces.

Interface device targetsmedical and metering

PRQA ANNOUNCED a differ-ent approach for identifying criti-cal coding issues with technologyto perform deep-flow dataflowanalysis, identifying critical cod-ing issues relating to control-flow,variable state and library usage.The module will be included inupcoming releases of the compa-ny’s QA·C in the next month andQA·C++ later this year.

The dataflow analysis modulecontains a satisfiability modulo

theories (SMT) solver engine, atechnology first for deep-flowstatic analysis products. A combi-nation of SMT solver technologyand in-house language and pars-ing expertise in function controlflow and detailed semantics hascreated a set of unique analysischecks for C and C++ code.

“We are using a solver enginethat has been in research forthe past five years,” said FergusBolger, chief technical officer atPRQA. “It provides some very re-

fined analysis about dataflow.”Using the SMT solver, the data-

flow module delivers code-model-ling capabilities such as the inter-dependency between variablesbeing included in the code mod-elling, both for assignments andin determination of conditionalexpressions (control flow).

Modelling includes a bi-direc-

Tool performs deep-flowdataflow analysis

tional approach where later con-ditional tests can identify earliersuspicious variable usage.

“The embedded software indus-try is dominated by use of C andC++ languages,” said Bolger. “Alimitation of many current staticanalysis tools, particularly forembedded industries, is a focus onsoftware interface layers ratherthan detailed code semantics. Justas important to embedded devel-opers is the challenge of dataflow

analysis focussed on a preciseand detailed function level, liter-ally on the bits and bytes of manyindustries’ critical software-basedsystems.”

Loop iterations are modelledaccurately, including incrementsby other than ‘1’, multiple loopcontrol variables and nested loops.Bit-fields are modelled exactly asthe compiler would handle them,matching the true size of all typesand yielding intelligence on unionsand bit-field operations.

Fergus Bolger: “It provides veryrefined analysis about dataflow.”

Robert Day: “A new type of defencesystem needed to bebuilt in.”

Jonathan Kelly: “It ensures you get traceability across the lifecycle.”

Suganya Sankaran: “Buildingautomation is a big one.”

Micros cut

power andcost

LOW POWER and high integra-tion are the key features of thePic 18F K80 8bit Can micro-controllers launched at the showby Microchip. With 1.8 to 5.5Voperation and the firm’s ExtremeXLP low power technology, theyachieve a sleep current consump-tion of less than 20nA.

“Customers always want lowcost and high integration, and wehave addressed that with this lowpower part,” said Suganya San-karan, senior product marketingengineer.

Applications are in automotivebody control, building automa-tion and industrial markets.

“Building automation is a bigone,” said Sankaran. “That iscoming up, especially in the eleva-tors and escalators segment.”

For automotive and industrialapplications, the MCUs enablesmaller, more cost-effective androbust control using the integratedCan peripheral. For applicationsthat require low power and accu-racy, they deliver claimed best-in-industry current ratings for longerbattery life, as well as an on-chip12bit ADC and touch-sensing pe-ripheral for advanced sensors.

Automotive applications in-clude lighting, door, seat, steering,window and HVAC controls.

“Having a sleep current downto 20nA is ideal for a lot of powerconstrained applications in auto-motive and industrial,” said San-karan.

DRA IS supporting the IEC1508 and IEC 61508:2010 func-onal safety standards for electri-al, electronic and programmableectronic systems, from require-ents through design, code, anal-is and certification. As a broadnctional safety standard appli-

able to a wide range of indus-ies, IEC 61508 focuses on riskduction and the safety lifecycler equipment and systems under

oftware control.

“When the revised standardame out, we revised our toolso people can use our tools forompliance,” said Jonathan Kelly,les manager at LDRA. “It en-

ures you get traceability acrosse lifecycle.”IEC 61508 focuses on reduc-

ing risk through adherence to asafety lifecycle and applying test-ing practices based on appropri-ate safety integrity levels. It estab-lishes the level of safety risk fora system or system componentusing four safety integrity levels(SILs) and translates these SILsinto software-specific objectives.In addition, developers must fol-low IEC 61508’s defined 16-phasesafety lifecycle, which requires acomplete software development

plan that demonstrates fulfilmentof requirements through all stagesof development.

The LDRA tool suite automati-cally checks compliance to IEC61508 through all stages of thesoftware development lifecycle.

In addition to coding rule com-

pliance, code complexity metrics,code coverage metrics, dataflowanalysis and host-target testing,

Tool suite extended withIEC 61508 support

the tool extends IEC 61508 com-pliance for software safety andsystem requirements traceabilitydown to the processor level.

The company has also extendedits TB Manager test managementand traceability component with-in the tool suite. With the adop-tion of process-oriented stan-dards such as IEC 62304, IEC61508:2010 and ISO/DIS 26262,software developers must complywith programming standards and

provide requirements traceability.To ease compliance and require-ments traceability, TB Managerhas been extended to deliver moretransparency, implement consis-tent test plans throughout a team,and manage the flux between re-quirements, code and tests.

VERSION 5.0 of the Lynx Secureseparation kernel and hypervisoradds performance increases forfully virtualised guest operatingsystems by using hardware tech-nologies and providing 64bit andSMP guest os virtualisation sup-port.

Launched by Lynuxworks at

the show, Lynx Secure 5.0 hasalso added a device sharing facil-ity for systems with limited physi-cal devices that complements theexisting direct device assignmentmechanism that has been avail-able in previous versions. Withthis release, the same highly se-cure virtualisation used in safetyand security-critical military,medical and avionics embeddedapplications can now also be usedin more enterprise-based systemsto support secure client virtuali-sation, secure multi-tenancy andsecure hardware appliances.

“General purpose operatingsystems and some embedded oper-ating systems don’t have any true

Hypervisor increases network protectionsecurity,” said RobertDay, Lynuxworks vicepresident of market-ing. “Microsoft Win-dows is the one thatgets hacked most ofthe time but the otheroperating systemshave vulnerabilities.

So a new type of de-fence system neededto be built in.”

By using Lynx Se-cure’s policy-driven, inter-parti-tion communications mechanism,the performance and security ofshared devices such as network,USB, HDD and graphics is op-timised, bringing the benefits ofsecurity and virtualisation to re-source-limited client systems, suchas laptops or embedded devices.

A fully virtualised os runswithout any changes required toeither the os or the applicationswhen housed in a secure enclaveon Lynx Secure. By using keyprocessor technologies such as

the second genera-tion Intel Core SandyBridge processors,along with key Intelhardware functionssuch as EPT extendedpage tables, PAT pageattribute table andAVX advanced vector

extensions, in-housebenchmarks show anexecution speed with-in a few percentage

points of running natively.“We have been working with

Intel on Sandy Bridge,” said JohnBlevins, director of product mar-keting. “This is a big release forus. It is the biggest release we havemade.”

Another key feature is the abil-ity to run 64bit fully virtualisedguest oses with symmetric multi-processing enabled. This meansthat 64bit oses such as Windows7, Linux and Solaris can runacross multiple cores managed bythe security of Lynx Secure.

Ian Dunn: “We use the sparepins to transfer data faster.”

David and David

It was the story of two Davids on HCC-Embedded’s stand as DavidHughes (left) welcomed his new recruit David Brook (right) to thecompany. Just two days before the show, Brook was working for Wit-tenstein High Integrity Systems but has taken up the role at HCC ofdirector of sales and marketing.

Hughes, who is HCC’s managing director, said: “David’s an experi-enced person with a great knowledge of the embedded environmentand is very suited to developing our business in the direction we wantto go.”

“It is good having a new boss,” said Brook. “Within 15 minutes ofjoining he had me doing a web interview at this show.”

His first real job though will be pushing the company’s advancedembedded middleware, which has been ten years in development.

“We have been working on this for quite a while now and just gettingto the point where we can announce it,” said Hughes.

Brooks added: “We are now introducing TCP/IP underneath theadvanced embedded middleware. I am not aware of a TCP/IP stack thathas been developed to this level and this certification.”


12/23


devices available with almostany combination of peripheralsto address various but specificneeds. It isn’t uncommon fora system to use multiple 8bit

Microcontrollers

Two overriding parameters now determine the success

or failure of any new microcontroller family. Odo Akaji

explains how combining them successfully can promote the

MCU from a supporting role to the star of the show

There are predominantlytwo parameters nowdriving demand for high-

nd micr

Documents

mte april2011web