From kindergarten to Kickstarter

Posted on September 24, 2013 by admin

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Resurgence of the Do It Yourself (DIY) community has driven a range of open networking platforms, giving aspiring technologists cheap and easy access to embedded development. Outside of hobbyist toys and educational devices, however, “hacker” boards are increasing performance and I/O flexibility, and have become viable options for professional product development.

MinnowBoard is an Intel Atom-based platform equipped with interfaces like SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, and PCI Express, and is suited for applications such as Networking Attached Storage (NAS) and Network security, Garman says (Figure 3). “Professional embedded developers working on commercial products will like the fact that the MinnowBoard is open hardware, and can be customized without having to sign any Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs),” he adds.

refer to:

http://embedded-computing.com/articles/diy-pushes-open-hardware-kindergarten-kickstarter/

 

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IT Technology for industrial controls applications

Posted on September 17, 2013 by admin

It is the author’s opinion that integration of the controls networking and the IT network is inevitable. It became inevitable the moment the controls industry chose to use Ethernet as the medium with which to communicate data. The controls industry may choose to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern automation era, or it can gracefully embrace the change. Embracing means the controls industry would be able to leverage the myriad rich, existing technologies that have been proven foolproof in the IT world. To be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern automation era would do a terrible injustice to those who have worked diligently to bring it about. This could quite possibly add an entirely new facet to the fieldbus wars, which I hope have not been forgotten.

With that said, the controls world is going to be moving with an industry that has a definite consumer bias, with product development and release cycles of six months or less. In an industry where the average life expectancy of an automotive production line is eight years, it is impossible to expect the networks in an industrial setting to keep up with modern IT standards. Therefore, we turn our attention to the technologies that have existed the longest, with the most open standards and the very best support. These are the protocols we wish to use and keep, and this article highlights and explains some of these technologies.

refer to:
http://www.automation.com/leveraging-it-technology-for-industrial-controls-applications

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Road for embedded pc future

Posted on September 3, 2013 by admin

Creating a customized SDK basically comes down to selecting the set of embedded computer libraries and APIs that application developers should use, and then ensuring that they are built into the application development toolchain in a version-controlled way. If the application will take advantage of dynamic linking, then this also means ensuring consistent versions are built for the developers’ desktops as well as into the runtime target images. Delivering the SDK in an easily installable format solutions to ensure consistency across all application developers.
As with most typical embedded products built upon solutions an open source platform, it’s likely that the development team will have to keep track of the obligations incurred across many different open source licenses, not just a single license. As one example, we provide “small footprint starting points,” which are prebuilt embedded Linux images typically only a few megabytes in size and which simplify getting up and running quickly and easily with embedded Linux. As solutions  shown in Figure 2, a small footprint starting point might only include seven open source packages, but those seven packages actually fall under four different open source licenses.

The use of each type of open source license in an embedded product design imposes a unique set of obligations on the development team that is incorporating this software into their products. Because of this, some companies maintain a list of open source licenses approved for use by their developers. Other companies go further, explicitly listing which specific version of each open source package has been approved for possible incorporation into the company’s embedded computer  products.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/the-not-code-quality/

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Manufacture enhancement for MOST revive

Posted on August 13, 2013 by admin

MOST150 enables the use of a higher bandwidth of 150 Mbps, an isochronous transport mechanism to support extensive video applications, and an embedded Ethernet channel for efficient transport of IP-based packet data. It succeeds in providing significant speed enhancements and breakthroughs while keeping costs down. We proudly announces that the newest Specification Rev. 3.0 is on its way to In-Vehicle computers. Further Information on MOST: MOST Forum 2010. The MOST Forum 2010 promises a very high quality conference program offering an insight into the latest and future MOST Technology solutions and studies. This second international MOST Conference and exhibition will take place on 23 March 2010 in Frankfurt (Germany).Various In-Vehicle computers  have already started with first series projects implementing this latest MOST Technology.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/news/most150-series-adoption/

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OEM development dilemma versus transitional facts

Posted on August 6, 2013 by admin

OEMs also face the challenge of implementing this state-of-the-art technology in their new or existing applications, including validation and verification of the applications’ functionality and access to hardware functions and I/Os. To reduce the amount of R&D work, lower costs and shorten their products’ time to market, they seek ways to cut down their initial development and migration tasks. One approach is to make use of a hardware vendor’ migration services. These embedded products as they are known, are no longer limited to the consumer market. They are making their entrance into the embedded market with the arrival of the new AMD Embedded G-Series platform. OEMs can now add the parallel processing power of the AMD Radeon 6310 GPU to their applications. By doing this, it’s possible to add supercomputer-like performance to small-form-factor embedded designs and obtain a previously unachievable performance-per-watt ratio. Additionally, with the support for OpenCL 1.1 and Microsoft DirectCompute, parallel embedded products  by the graphics core will speed up vector processing applications such as situational awareness and video surveillance in the industrial automation, military and medical markets.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/white-papers/white-small-form-factor-sff-designs-2/

 

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Embedded computing environment change

Posted on July 29, 2013 by admin

This whitepaper gives engineers a closer look into the architectural improvements of the new microarchitecture and delivers the answers as to how they can integrate these most efficiently into their appliances.The 4th generation Intel® Core™ processors serve the embedded computing space with a new microarchitecture which Kontron will implement on a broad range of embedded computing platforms. These improvements and the high scalability from cost-optimized Celeron® versions up to high-end Intel® Core™ i7 and Xeon® processors make the new Intel® Core™ microarchitecture a perfect match for nearly each and every mid-range to high-end embedded applications. In a first step Kontron has implemented the new microarchitecture on COM Express®, Mini-ITX, 6U CompactPCI®, and the Kontron SYMKLOUD Media cloud embedded computing with further platforms to follow. So, in what way can embedded appliances benefit from these improvements?

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/white-papers/white-intelr-coretm-processors/

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Telehealth achievement in progress

Posted on July 22, 2013 by admin

This is just one example of why embedded computer telehealth strategies are poised to revolutionize medicine. Telehealth not only provides quick access to specialists, but can also remotely monitor patients and reduce clinical expenses. Many of the systems needed to realize these benefits will operate on the edge, and require technology with the portability and price point of commercial mobile platforms, as well as the flexibility to perform multiple functions securely and in real time. All of this must be provided in a package that can meet the rigors of certification and scale over long lifecycle deployments.

“Qseven does make it easier to design  embedded computer with because bringing up an Android system is not easy, contrary to popular opinion. Everybody has an Android system but those also drive a significant amount of volume in mobile and they put a lot of investment and people to make that happen. You cannot really do that in other spaces. Bringing up a stable platform is very important, and just having that modular architecture makes it so you do not really have to go and change things around too much.”

refer to: http://smallformfactors.com/articles/qseven-coms-healthcare-mobile/

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JEDEC membership within the embedded system

Posted on July 15, 2013 by admin

ECC has become a mainstay in embedded systems. However, the JEDEC membership initially did not recognize the need to accommodate ECC when it was developing the DDR2 specification. Most laptop chipsets did not support ECC at the time. Seeing the need for ECC that could be implemented on faster DDR2 memory modules in Embedded Systems, Virtium sponsored the ECC SODIMM specification within JEDEC, which has been extended now to DDR3 and DDR4 modules. thermal management. Incorporating a reduced height DDR3L VLP memory module helps improve airflow and provides a low profile, allowing OEMs to offer higher-reliability products that reduce total cost of ownership. Specific DDR3L VLP modules also offer single refresh rates, which are now essential to maximize performance in high-temperature embedded systems.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/ruggedization-memory-module-design/

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Tough challenge for embedded computer designers

Posted on July 2, 2013 by admin

As designers piece together the requirements for each new project, real-time performance is one of the early considerations. OS vendors use terms like “hard” and “soft” to describe the real-time operation of their systems. Hard real-time embedded systems are scheduled so tasks are guaranteed to start within a precise length of time from an external event. Hard real-time embedded systems are deterministic. Soft real-time systems generally list the average length of time to start the routine, but there is a small probability that the maximum time can be much longer. Mission-critical applications must be deterministic. For example, industrial actuators, airbag controllers, and even arcade games must react in a known time. Soft real-time applications usually respond within a few seconds but an occasional slow response is not critical.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/choose-right-embedded-operating-system/

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Card sized SBC

Posted on June 26, 2013 by admin

Console server, networking appliance, Industrial PC

 

The initial goal in creating the Raspberry Pi credit card sized, Linux-based Single Board Computer (SBC) – targeted primarily at education – was to develop a response to the decline of students engaging with computer science and related engineering disciplines. Our desire was to reverse the trend of children becoming consumers rather than creators. The following case study follows the hardware development process from an early failure, initial prototypes, and through to the finished production design.
Over recent years there has been an increasing trend for children to be consumers of digital content rather than be future creators or engineers. This trend is driven by manufacturers looking to provide a seamless experience for target customers on a variety of electronic platforms, from gaming consoles to tablets and laptop computers. As a result, access to raw I/O has become restricted. Similarly, any packaged provision of a programming environment is an anathema to the products’ commercial goals. The knowledge required to create “hello world” or flash an external LED has become simply too vast and the opportunity to learn vital skills such as structuring/codifying ideas and debugging has been largely subsumed by a click-and-shoot world. Any motivation to get under the hood and see how these products work is largely dissipated by the impenetrable barriers presented by these “locked down” systems.

refer to :http://embedded-computing.com/articles/case-card-sized-sbc/

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