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23 april 2008 - eg3.com e-clips
www.eg3.com/eCLIPS - info@eg3.com - circulation: 42656 subscribers
by jason mcdonald with gloria mcnabb, noelle decambra, & angie avilla
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embedded systems san jose - show review... |
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Intel's atom, new board standards, design contests and announcements of new developer conferences from Microchip and Renesas... Microsoft's keynote with the new
SPARK program... Software development tools, eval kits, new coding technologies. The just-concluded Embedded Systems Conference, San Jose, shed new light on critical new products and technologies that you can use to make your designs better, today. Don't miss our full index to all participating companies and all news @ www.eg3.com/embshow. Here are our highlights and "best of show" selections.
contents:
- battle of the boards: new standards
- atomic energy: intel's atom explodes into embedded
- spark, rtoses and embedded tools
- eg3.com's "best of show" selections
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battle of the boards: new standards
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Embedded Systems Conference, San Jose was very much a conference about boards and board-standards. Hardware had predominance, despite the fact that software issues like multicore and virtualization are probably the "cutting edge" of the industry. Board vendors like VersaLogic, the newly reorganized Eurotech, Inc., and even Microsoft, with their new and exciting SPARK program and its plethora of board support - all competed on the show floor and technical expo for attention.
One way to compare (and contrast) board vendors is standards, and ESC was a veritable "battle of the boards." The Small Form Factor SIG unveiled their SUMIT™
interface specification aimed toward next generation, low power, expandable single board
computers (SBCs):
With a blend of high bandwidth PCI Express. lanes, USB ports, and lower
speed multiplexed and serial buses, SUMIT can be added to a variety of board form factors, and is
flexible and compact enough to meet a very broad range of application requirements. Unifying
the expansion interfaces of many SBC form factors has the potential to consolidate I/O
ecosystems, which could improve economies of scale for I/O.
In all modesty, the SIG added, "This announcement represents the
biggest advancement in small form factor board architecture since PC/104 in the 1990's." (Details, here.) Express104™, which defines a new small stackable module form factor based on SUMIT, was also announced.
Not to be outdone, the PC/104 Embedded Consortium trumpeted their newly approved PCI/104-Express™ and PCIe/104™ specification to address the needs of current and future stackable embedded PC applications. (Details, here.) Curiously, many of the same companies are in both consortia, and members of each indicated that the various standards are (hopefully) going after different market segments. Neither announcement was backed by shipping boards, so only time will tell which standard will succeed (or perhaps both), but at least standards that converge on PCI Express and stackability may soon be available to OEM customers.
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atomic energy: intel's atom explodes into embedded
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We have to confess - after show after show with Intel's Orange County chopper, we had become numb to Intel's bizarre emphasis on motorcycles over substantive news. Fortunately, at ESC the marketing chopper was relegated to the exit, and Intel actually had interesting news with extensive board support: the Atom™ processor. Intel is pushing Atom™ aggressively into the embedded space, with two SKUs: Z530 at 1.6GHz and Z510 at 1.1GHz, with extended lifecycle support of 7 years and complete set of software drivers available in July. Atom™ makes possible even smaller form factor fan-less designs, with this two-chip platform providing more than 80 percent reduction in total footprint over the previous-generation three-chip solutions. (Details, here).
Even better, Atom™ enjoyed extensive support at ESC, and was probably the most dynamic news of the show. The newly reorganized Eurotech Inc., for example, announced their Catalyst Module, the company's latest computer on module product for low power, high performance applications. It combines the company's expertise in power management techniques and algorithms with the Atom™ processor Z500 series and Intel System Controller Hub US15W. (Details, here). The coolest Atom™-based announcement came from InHand Electronics. Their FireFly™ system is based on the Atom™ processor Z500 series and Intel System Controller Hub (SCH) US15W. At approximately the same size as COM-Express modules, which require a carrier board, the FireFly can be used as a stand-alone single board computer (SBC) or with an expansion board. Power supplies, battery charger, memory, wireless interfaces, SD slot, LCD interface, HDD interface, ExpressCard™ slot and standard peripheral connectors will all be included on-board. Check it out here. Unique among software, QNX was the first embedded OS vendor to offer "instant-on" support for the Intel Atom processor, a capability sure to be important for its consumer, pda, and handheld focus. (Release here). To find all the Atom™-related news, click
here.
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spark, rtoses and embedded tools
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That it was very much a hardware show was substantiated by Microsoft's SPARK Your Imagination Program. The idea is to "spark" design imagination among hobbyists and academics by providing Windows CE with easy-to-use boards at a very low price point - all with the recognition that many hobbyists are full-time engineers, and today's hobbyist designs may become tomorrow's million unit roll-outs. Check it out here. The program makes it easy to experiment with CE on real hardware.
On the tools front, Express Logic sought to make embedded design easy and inexpensive by that company's foray into the tools / IDE market. The company anounced BenchX™, its $1000 Eclipse-based tool with an easy-to-use Windows graphical IDE plus GNU / GCC / GDB support. (Details, here). Telelogic also had Eclipse news, announcing enhancements to its Rhapsody™ tool. The announcement both builds upon Eclipse and enhances the company's easy-of-use by which "legacy" C and C++ code can be imported into Rhapsody and easily manipulated. Details, here.
Finally, Quadros pushed into better networking by announcing Quark TCP/IP. RTXC Quark TCP/IP software utilizes a high-speed dataplane architecture to rapidly process TCP, IP and UDP packets with minimal "touching." "The significant surge in new low cost 32-bit microcontrollers has defined a clear need for software that can run efficiently in memory-constrained systems with limited or non-existent external bus structures," said Stephen Martin, vice president of sales and marketing for Quadros Systems. (Details, here). Another interesting networking announcement came from Real-Time Innovations (RTI), which now supports lossy networks in RTI Data Distribution Service 4.3. Lossy networks - those that have uncertain or sporadic connectivity - are common in a variety of applications, such as defense, unmanned vehicles, oil production and other resource-management applications. (Details, here).
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eg3.com's "best of show" selections
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The best aspect about ESC is the overwhelming volume of information and excitement. And that is its worst aspect as well: it is easy to miss the really cool new technologies amidst all the noise. In that light, therefore, here are our "best of show" selections:
All are great technology announcements, and be sure to view our complete ESC news coverage at http://www.eg3.com/embshow/. Enjoy.
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