Embedded-system design: Those devilish details

Embedded-system designers are once again emerging from their cubicles and laboratories to saunter up and down the aisles of the Silicon Valley version of the Embedded Systems Conference in search of the latest products and techniques to ease their professional lives. No, you won’t see the end products that these designers are famous for, such as medical instrumentation, industrial automation, military-weapon systems, or even the latest portable-multimedia devices. What you see are the hidden details that designers use to make these products perform their magic. Embedded design is all about sufficiently defining and controlling these details to produce the desired result within budget and on schedule.

But what exactly are these embedded-system designers looking for at a gathering such as the Embedded Systems Conference? They are looking for the elusive component that will eliminate the noise or increase the bandwidth of the project’s latest circuit design. They want low-cost debugging tools that will reduce all of those hours spent locating that last bug in the firmware. They also want an educational or how-to seminar to get them up to speed for the extreme expectations of the next project. They need the embedded details that will guide them along a successful path in their career. Or maybe they just want a little time away from the office.

One embedded-system detail has a major impact on embedded design: the industry’s transition from a parallel-multidrop-bus structure to switched-serial-fabric interconnections. We have dedicated this issue to the ins and outs of fabric technology at both the board- and the chip-design levels. My cover story outlines the latest board-level-interconnection strategies you need to keep up with the soaring data rates in today’s embedded systems. I also examine several ways that board standards integrate the new switched fabrics into legacy technology to reduce costs and simplify the transition. Taking high-speed serial technology one level deeper, EDN’s Executive Editor Ron Wilson uncovers switched fabric’s impact on system-on-chip designs. Ron discusses the integration of high-speed serial I/O—from IP (intellectual-property)-vendor selection through the integration and verification processes.

April is also that time of year when EDN honors the creators of the hottest product, software, and technical articles deemed most valuable to the embedded-design community. Our annual EDN Innovations Awards ceremony honors outstanding engineering professionals and the products they conceive. This year’s product finalists include a diverse list of embedded details, including a video-format converter from Marvell, an industrial ADC from Cirrus Logic, and a wireless-development tool from Texas Instruments. We announced the winners on April 14. EDN donates a portion of the proceeds from the nominations and the awards event to an engineering college or university that the Innovator of the Year chooses. It’s our way of encouraging and supporting tomorrow’s great minds. Here you can find a complete listing of the finalists and winners.

As you marvel at our industry’s electronic masterpieces, you can be sure of one thing: A team of embedded-system designers painstakingly analyzed and tuned all of the minute hardware and software details. And the next time you hear the hackneyed phrase “the devil is in the details,” I hope it will remind you of embedded-system-design engineers and their daily trek through our industry’s electronics minutiae to stretch the technology envelope to fit their current project assignments.

What are your thoughts? Contact me at wwebb@edn.com.