tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-349430682009-06-04T10:47:14.109-04:00Various rants, suggestions and pointers for embedded system developers from someone who has been there and done that. From VxWorks(tm) to Linux(tm) and all points in between...PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-45070396401494754042009-06-04T10:31:00.002-04:002009-06-04T10:47:09.869-04:00

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you breaking news... Intel has acquired WindRiver Systems for $884 Million. I can certainly see where this makes sense for Intel. They've been pushing in the embedded space for quite some time with the Atom. And, WRS's offerings play well into an apparent Intel strategy for moving further into the Mil/Aero arena. The question that

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-50452985886223636002009-06-03T16:54:00.002-04:002009-06-03T17:31:33.729-04:00

With the economic downturn and the imminent demise of Windows Vista, more folks are looking seriously at Linux as a development platform for embedded systems. However, most of us live in a Micro$oft-centric world. We have Exchange servers, Outlook email, Word documents, Powerpoint presentations and a management infrastructure that only understands MS Windows. How can the developer who wants

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-88658737127276793852009-03-19T15:47:00.002-04:002009-03-19T16:20:07.748-04:00

I had a friend of mine a few months back tell me that Intel's Atom processor was a "game changer" for embedded systems. The theory goes that Intel is now in the low-power marketplace and the days of processors like the ARM and Power cores are numbered. After I stopped laughing, I took some time to really think it through from his perspective.He is in the consumer electronics biz. He makes DVRs

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-24842101776389550422009-03-19T09:28:00.003-04:002009-03-19T10:01:05.270-04:00

Hmm... OK, it's been almost three years since Intel sold the XSCALE line to Marvell. Back just after the sale, there was a lot of noise about the Monahans part (PXA-320) and how power efficient it was, etc. We all waited, but the PXA-320 never really made the splash or the inroads into the cell phone market that it was supposed to.In the mean time, TI has come out with multiple OMAP variants

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-45311812645723400562008-05-20T17:03:00.002-04:002008-05-20T17:59:30.921-04:00

I recently wrote a couple of think pieces for IEEE and Embedded Intel Magazine discussing the sad state of affairs regarding the dwindling pool of embedded systems developers. Basically, my thesis was that many institutes of higher learning are no longer teaching CS majors what computers are all about from a low-level perspective (CPUs, caches, data busses and the like) and this is causing a

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-76667800282546892352008-02-04T10:21:00.000-05:002008-02-04T10:39:14.165-05:00

Greetings! I've noticed something over the past few months. Namely, none of the commercial distributions of embedded Linux support Debian-based distributions for development. Neither WindRiver, MontaVista, LynuxWorks, nor Timesys support any Debian-based installations. This rules out easily installing any of their commercial products on distributions like Ubuntu. Yes, I know that you can use

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-32570561095875870072007-12-03T19:42:00.000-05:002007-12-03T22:22:55.461-05:00

We hear a lot of noise from the silicon manufacturers today about how multi-core processors are the wave of the future. Certainly, they do allow us to pack more performance into a single package. However, are they a good fit for embedded systems? One argument is that with two or more cores at a lower voltage, we can run with a lower thermal dissipated power envelope. This is certainly true.

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-20491188876722089462007-09-06T09:12:00.000-04:002007-09-06T09:27:40.450-04:00

Well... From my last post I reported that Palm had announced the development environment for for the Palm Foleo was stripped version of Wind River's WorkBench product. I also stated that I thought that shipping the Foleo with a 2.4 kernel was a mistake given that 2.6 has been around for over 3 years now. In addition, I commented that the WorkBench environment cost as much as the Foleo itself,

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-32420718285880002752007-09-05T09:29:00.000-04:002007-09-05T12:02:43.154-04:00

Greetings! It's been about 6 weeks since my last posting. Sorry for the delay, but I've been at LinuxWorld and spent the past couple of weeks in Alaska with my family. Alaska was awesome. But, since I didn't strike it rich panning for gold, I'll have to keep working my day job :-). The topic of this posting is LinuxWorld. This is the traditional gathering of all things Linux in San Francisco,

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-77092889961005414512007-07-05T11:10:00.000-04:002007-07-05T12:26:23.874-04:00

Well, GPLv3 has finally been released. This is an attempt by many of the movers and shakers in the open-source community to close the loop holes found in GPLv2. However, as someone who is trying to use Linux in many different types of embedded applications, I find GPLv3 somewhat troubling. The reality of the embedded space is that silicon vendors such as Marvell, make it almost impossible to

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-6230215221846408462007-06-18T17:31:00.000-04:002007-06-18T18:11:02.400-04:00

Spacecraft applications have long been the bastion of proprietary solutions. Custom RAD-hard processors, custom bus architectures and custom command and control software are the typical fare of space-borne platforms. The use of all of this custom hardware and software makes access to space an incredibly expensive venture. All of this is before you can find a lift vehicle to get you to orbit!

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-1162490026931805012006-11-02T12:18:00.000-05:002006-11-02T12:53:47.033-05:00

OK, I know that this topic has been addressed before, but times are a changin'. With the latest set of real-time patches being accepted into the 2.6.18 kernel, Linux is really becoming capable of hard, real-time performance. With the introduction of priority inheritance support and interrupt threads, we can now see a level of determinism that was previously only available in the RTOSes and

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34943068.post-1159100382467031522006-09-24T08:09:00.000-04:002006-09-24T08:19:42.473-04:00

How can it be that universities are graduating students in Computer Science that don't know some form of assembly language? I can't begin to count the number of students in my Embedded Linux device driver courses that have never seen a data sheet and don't know what a register is. They want to know how to write a board support package (BSP), but they don't speak assembly language and never

PTR-Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05469603761820043356noreply@blogger.com3