Embedded Live - Embedded Systems Design

Video: National Instruments FlexRIO

2010-11-02T16:59:46Z

Video: Rohde & Schwarz RTO Series scopes

2010-11-02T16:57:20Z

Embedded Live 2010, covered live

2010-10-31T13:59:44Z

The event in real time, as was covered by CoverItLive!

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=9a657a8470" >Embedded Live 2010</a>

Embedded Live 2010 is live!

2010-10-19T16:05:31Z

Time has flown and Tuesday October 19 has arrived, which means Embedded Live has started, in Conference form!

The Exhibition kicks off tomorrow, of course, and continues on Thursday, running parallel with the Conference.

We will be tweeting and filming and live blogging and walking and talking from the show floor tomorrow, courtesy of the CoverItLive live blogging tool.

Simply point your broweser at - Embedded Live, Covered Live - and stay tuned!

Optimizing Linux Applications on ARM Processors

2010-10-14T14:53:03Z

I highlighted the Cortex-M4 Development tool seminar yesterday, but there is another session added to the ARM Connected Community programme: Optimizing Linux Applications on ARM Processors

It will be run by both John Bernard (Global Marketing, Canonical) and Mark Onions (Director of Marketing, ARM), and last 60 minutes. The date to note is Wednesday 20th October, 3.30pm - 4.30pm.

The seminar abstract: ]]> Today's embedded platforms run high performance operating systems such as Linux, leading to many desktop style applications being made available on them. However, great care needs to be taken in optimizing these applications in order to provide a compelling user experience. This presentation demonstrates how the latest development tools for Linux are used to more easily develop embedded Linux applications and help identify bottlenecks to improve the applications performance.Read more details >>

ARM seminar - Cortex-M4 Processor and Development tools

2010-10-13T11:04:47Z

An important part of Embedded Live is the ARM Connected Community programme.

ARM has added some sponsored sessions that complement the already announced sessions from Freescale and NXP.

Take note, for example, of "Cortex-M4 Processor and Development tools", run by Shyam Sadasivan, Product Manager, and Mark Onions, Director of Marketing, ARM.

]]> Cortex-M processor-based devices have are becoming the standard choice in the embedded market. The new ARM Cortex-M4 expands this performance to include DSP functionality. This presentation introduces the key features of Cortex-M4 and how they can be used and optimized in real software applications.Read more details >>

Embedded Software Design - Meet the experts and share their insights

2010-10-08T14:11:11Z

One of the highlights of Embedded Live, on the Wednesday, is sure to be the Meet The Experts panel debate, on Embedded Software Design

The moderator, ensuring fair play, will be Colin Holland of EE Times, and the panelists comprise:

• Robert Berger, Embedded Software Specialist, Reliable Embedded Systems

• Max Domeika, Software Engineer, Intel

• Frank van den Berg, Technical Director EMEA, Green Hills Software

Topics may include, but are not limited to: ]]>
• Programming and Debugging of Multi-Core System Code - how to detect and identify bugs in multi-core systems, how to optimise parallel programmes.

• Open-Source or Not to Open-Source: That is the Question - the whys, hows, and issues with adopting open-source software, such as the Android OS, a Linux kernel, or an open-source communication protocol stack.

Meet the experts and share their insights!

Make a note in your diary: the venue is the Exhibition Theatre, on Wednesday 20th October, 13:30 - 14:15pm.

See the full schedule for the Exhibition Theatre >>

Simplifying the hard part of multicore: partitioning code

2010-10-07T13:02:55Z

Here is another seminar session to note, at Embedded Live. Simplifying the Hard Part of Multicore: Partitioning Code - it will be presented by Stefan Holdermans, Software Development Engineer at Vector Fabrics, on the Wednesday (October 20, 12:30pm - 1:30pm).

It will be an opportunity to learn a new methodology for parallelizing sequential embedded C code, one that makes the process more tractable than current manual techniques.

Aimed at an "Intermediate" level audience, a prerequisite is basic familiarity with multicore (users that have done manual partitioning will gain the most, says Stefan).

Presentation Abstract: ]]> One of the barriers slowing an enthusiastic transition to embedded multicore is the difficulty of parallelizing your functionality. Especially with the C language, subtle dependencies, often due to "clever" pointer use, can create a design nightmare. The elusive bugs that can result from incorrect partitioning or missing data synchronization can add weeks of frustrating debug time. While tools are available for a few select aspects of multicore implementation, designers have been on their own to do the difficult partitioning job the best way they can. Information on dependencies is hard to obtain, making the partitioning decisions into a guessing game, and implementation involves many tedious steps, any one of which, if missed, could send the project into debug purgatory. In this session, you'll learn why manual partitioning is so hard, and you'll see a new methodology and tool that address the hard partitioning problem directly. Partitioning becomes much simpler once you are given a list of known-safe partitioning choices and detailed instructions on how to implement the results. Such an approach can dramatically lower the risk of moving to multicore.More details on the session >>

Queen's Award winner to give keynote at Embedded Live

2010-10-04T12:05:09Z

In April Cambridge-based smart metering specialist Sentec has been given a Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its growth over the last three years, during which the company more than trebled its overseas earnings to £4.3m.

Clifford Dive, business development director at Sentec, will present a keynote presentation on Thursday October 21 at Embedded Live, which takes place at Earls Court, London.

Sentec's smart metering technology is now included in over five million - around half - of the smart electricity meters installed in the US.

Clifford Dive's presentation is aimed at the 'Connected M2M Devices' audience, particularly in the smart metering and smart grid sector.

Coming initially from a technical background in the early days of real-time microprocessor products, a large part of Clifford's business life has been dedicated to embedded software development

Before joining Sentec this year, Dive woked for three years with mobile phone giant Qualcomm, initially leading the professional services team, and later promoting product innovation in the User Focused Innovation Team.

Embedded Live 2010 is now taking delegate registrations for the UK exhibition which takes place at Earls Court, London 20-21 October 2010.

Arrow brings Microsoft, Intel and Freescale to Embedded Live

2010-09-30T15:34:36Z

At Embedded Live (Earls Court, London, 20-21 October), Arrow Electronics will be presenting products and technology available through its Arrow Embedded Solutions (AES) team.

Alongside Arrow representatives there will be product specialists from manufacturers including Microsoft, Sharp, Intel, Freescale, Traco, Telit, Digital View and Advantech.

Among the products on display will be: Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 7 operating system; AC/DC and DC/DC power supplies from Traco; and short range radio devices and 2G/3G cellular modules from Telit Wireless Solutions.

Also featured will be Freescale Semiconductor's Kinetis ARM Cortex-M4 32bit microcontrollers, i.MX applications processors, Z-Star accelerometers and ZigBee development tools.

Fujitsu shows 65GSample/s ADC for 100Gbit/s data rates

2010-09-28T10:51:21Z

Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe is to demonstrate its second generation 8-bit analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) for 100Gbit/s optical transport designs based on coherent detection.

Learn more from Fujitsu Semiconductor at Embedded Live 2010 which takes place at Earls Court, London 20-21 October.

Implemented in a high-performance 0.9V 40nm CMOS technology, the 65GSa/s ADC demonstration chip has power dissipation for a single channel of 1.2W.

This is 50% less than previous ADC which was fabricated on a 65nm process.

"With this architecture, the ADC is no longer the limiting factor on speed and power," said Ian Dedic, chief ¬engineer of Fujitsu's communications business unit.

]]> The ADC has been designed by ¬Fujitsu's mixed-signal development group in Maidenhead. It is designed on the firm's CHArge-mode Interleaved Sampler (CHAIS) architecture, which is based on a four channel dual polarisation QPSK sampling scheme.

There is x2 over-sampling and so there is a need for considerable DSP on chip. This is around 30Tera operations per second.

According to Dedic, the single -chip design is the only way with this speed of device. Data throughput can be 1.3 to 1.8Tbit/s and it would be too power-costly to take signals at these speeds off chip.

"Effectively we have put the ADC design on the digital roadmap and it is now the speed and power consumption of the DSP which will be the limiting factor for future devices," said Dedic.

The track and hold circuits run very fast - less that 9ps to acquire the signal and 9ps to transfer to the next stage in the interleaving process.

The sampling circuits have a 16GHz bandwidth and the on-chip phase-locked loop generates as little as 30fs jitter.

At these frequencies the signal skew on the channels is critical. Fujitsu's design uses a technique whereby the matching is carried out with the ADC in operation by analysing the signal outputs and calibrating the samplers.

"We are now matching the interleaved channels to within 100fs," said Dedic.

Embedded Live 2010 is now taking delegate registrations for the UK exhibition which takes place at Earls Court, London 20-21 October 2010.

ByteSnap Design recognised for Windows Embedded work

2010-09-24T15:07:44Z

ByteSnap Design has become a Silver Partner in the Windows Embedded Partner Programme and will be presenting its capabilities at Embedded Live 2010 which takes place next month at Earls Court, London.

]]> The embedded electronics design and software consultancy develops and deploys both Windows CE and Windows Mobile products.

"We have some of the most experienced Windows CE programmers in Europe, engineers who have been using the operating system since version 1, said Dunstan Power, director of ByteSnap Design.

At Embedded Live (October 20-21), BytesSnap Design will be showing an updated version of its SnapUI cross-platform user interface development tool.

The updated version provides new features including camera controls, XML-driven UI design as well as serial and socket-based connectivity. SnapUI user interfaces can be designed for one platform (e.g. a PC) and re-deployed to another (e.g. an embedded device) with only minor configuration changes.

Embedded Live 2010 is now taking delegate registrations for the UK exhibition which takes place at Earls Court, London 20-21 October 2010.

Hunting Easter Eggs and Robot Tag - Intermediate robot challenges

2010-09-22T07:25:10Z

We have flagged the Roboteers Programme featuring at Embedded Live and drilled down into details of the Basic Level challenges - "sprint to the edge", remember the journey" and "dancing robot" - but what of the challenges for the more thoughtful and skilled robots?

Basically, there are three challenges facing the Intermediate-level robots: "Hunt the 'Easter egg'"; "Dancing Robot"; and "Robot Tag".

Robots at the Intermediate level will be based on LEGO Mindstorms (pictured) plus Tetrix (if desired), or will be POB or VEX-based robots. In both cases, total cost of components (mixing and matching is allowed) should be under £450.

]]> Hunt the "Easter egg" competition
-   the arena will be a large area with a number of randomly placed boxes
-   the "Easter eggs" will be coloured ping-pong balls
-   some of the ping pong balls will be placed on tops of boxes
-   some of the ping pong balls will be inside boxes (which will be open)
-   some of the ping pong balls will be "out in the open"
-   a competing robot will be given a colour and must collect up only ping pong balls of the correct colour
-   a box may have zero or more ping pong balls either on top of it or inside it
-   the winner will be the robot that finds the most "Easter eggs" in the allotted time.

Dancing robot - this is an exercise in creativity and ingenuity
-   you are to create a dancing robot
-   your robot can be equipped with LEDs, servos with various attachments to create an "exotic" effect ..
-   you will need to program your robot so as to "choreograph" its activities so as to be "in synch" with the music you have chosen
-   a dance sequence is to last for 5 minutes exactly
-   the winning robot will be judged on its "turnout" and its dancing and entertainment abilities

Robot Tag - The aim of this game is for one robot to chase another and "touch" it
-   both the robot being chased and the robot doing the chasing will have 4 LEDs flashing at 5 Hz to indicated their presence (one LED at each corner)
-   the LEDs must be clearly visible
-   a successful "tag" will be judged by the umpires
-   each round will last for 3 minutes
-   the course will also contain obstacles (not sufficiently high to hide behind) to be avoided
-   the competition will be organised into "elimination" rounds followed by quarter finals, semi finals and finals.

Note, all robots must be autonomous - i.e. cannot communicate with other computers when carrying out their tasks - and designs and software are to be open sourced.

It is a live event on Wednesday 20th October, for any attendee to come and have a go with their own robotics kits. Do also note, though, that places are limited on a first-come, first-served basis, but with priority given to attendees taking the Tuesday robotics class. The only condition of entry is that you or your team have your own robot...

Silica runs EtherCAT system at Embedded Live

2010-09-21T09:51:45Z

Silica will be running a live demonstration of controlling a high-stack shelving system based on the EtherCAT, (Ethernet for Control Automation Technology) standard on its stand at Embedded Live (October 20-21).

]]> The system is controlled via a process control system running as software under Microsoft's Windows Embedded Standard on an Intel Atom platform which serves both, as EtherCAT master and industrial PC.

The model's sensors and actuators are interfaced via a slave module, demonstrating how the EtherCAT standard is realised with an FPGA core on a Xilinx FPGA.

Galvanically separated interfaces linking the 3.3 V and 24 V domains use Infineon and STMicroelectronics modules.

The high-stack shelving system's input and output stations have both RFID readers implemented with NFC chips by NXP and barcode readers which analyse camera signals using a Renesas microcontroller. Readout data is sent to the PLC in the industrial PC and processed there.

Silica will be on Stand 220 at Embedded Live, Earls Court, London, October 20-21.

Rohde & Schwarz brings scopes to Embedded Live

2010-09-14T08:28:01Z

Rohde & Schwarz surprised the test industry in July when it announced its first ever oscilloscopes, which will be on show for visitors to try out at Embedded LIve (October 19-21) in London next month.

This is a big commitment by the Germany-based RF and microwave test systems specialist.

Rohde & Schwarz has said these first 2GHz and 500MHz product families are the first in a planned line of oscilloscopes.

]]> "Our customers expect us to offer a complete line of products, and that includes oscilloscopes," said president and CEO Michael Vohrer.

At launch the German test firm is offering a total of six new scopes in two families.

The RTM family has a range 2 and 4 channel mid-range scope with 500MHz bandwidth, 5Gsample/s sampling and a memory depth of up to 8Msamples.

The company has designed a user interface with flat menu structures and a 8.4-inch XGA TFT colour display.

RTO family of oscilloscopes are available with bandwidths of 1GHz and 2GHz and a maximum sampling rate of 10Gsample/s.

"We started from scratch as we didn't have to meet any existing expectations," project head at Rohde & Schwarz, Josef Wolf told EW.

Internally, the company has designed a new hardware trigger Asic and a 10Gsample/s SiGe ADC for each channel.

Embedded Live 2010 is now taking delegate registrations for the UK exhibition & conference which takes place at Earls Court, London 20-21 October 2010.

Confirmed exhibitors include:

Agilent Technologies
ARM
Fujitsu Semiconductor
Green Hills Software
IBASE
MSC-Gleichmann
National Instruments
Nokia - Qt Software
NXP Semiconductor
Pebble Bay Consulting
Pico Technology
Rohde & Schwarz
RS Components
Tektronix
XJTAG

To register please visit the Embedded Live website registrations page.