Embedded Webblog

Building on their popular FPGA-based PXI, PC, and CompactRIO platforms, National Instruments has announced a new line of Single-Board RIO modules that offer designers a lower-cost, integrated hardware option for embedded control and data acquisition applications. The new sbRIO-96xx devices combine a real-time embedded processor and a reconfigurable FPGA plus analog and digital I/O on a single 8.2 x 5.6-inch printed circuit board. Similar to the existing FPGA-based platforms, designers can use LabVIEW graphical system design software to confi...Read More

Offering designers and hobbyist a low cost starting point for device development, Digi-Key, Texas Instruments, and a group of volunteers have joined forces to create an open, single board computer design that can be adapted to a multitude of embedded projects. The module, dubbed the Beagle Board, is a low-power, fanless design incorporating TI’s recently introduced OMAP35x processors based on the ARM Cortex-A8 core. The design reduces cost and power requirements by eliminating most on-board peripherals, except those provided by the processor, and incorporating standard expansion buses, like high-speed USB 2.0 and SDIO for application-specific I/O. The processor contain...Read More

One of the potential problems with PCI Express embedded designs containing multiple high speed data streams is known as endpoint starvation. This can occur when a downstream device requests sequential long reads and the Root Complex spends too much time in serving these requests. The result is that other downstream ports are ignored and therefore starved for data. The latest generation of PCI Express switches offer a read pacing feature to throttle the bandwidth allocated to each downstream device to eliminate endpoint starvation and enhance system performance. ...Read More

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the immediate availability of the Windows Embedded Standard 2009 community technology preview (CTP) designed for OEMs developing devices that connect to existing Enterprise infrastructure. The product will replace the current Windows XP Embedded and features new technologies such as Microsoft Silverlight, Remote Desktop Protocol 6.1, and .NET Framework 3.5. Windows Embedded Standard also includes componentized drivers for the latest x86 processor architectures, such as Intel’s Atom. The software a...Read More

Just as the embedded industry starts to get serious about system size and form factors, Mercury Computer Systems unveiled its smallest system. The PowerBlock 50  is an ultra-compact embedded computer optimized for real-time image, sensor, and signal processing. The system's modular architecture allows for configurations of multiple processors and delivers over 100 GFLOPS of processing power. The PowerBlock 50 uses a PCI Express switch fabric backplane for high-bandwidth interconnection between modules.  The backplane and cards that plug into it are a derivative of the off-the-shelf ExpressCard standard. Ruggedized for harsh environments and featuring liquid coo...Read More

As promised when the doors were closed on the long running Bus and Board conference, VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) brought back a revised board-level meeting this week based on “critical embedded systems”. These are life-critical or safety-critical systems whose failure or malfunction may result in death or serious injury, equipment damage, environmental harm, or large financial losses. This pretty much covers everything except consumer electronics devices such as cell phones, media players, and gaming systems. The event presentations included several topics including Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) products, military embedded systems, and board-level marke...Read More

As things wind down here in San Jose, you can still find plenty of evidence that the fabric technology discussed in the current issue of EDN has become commonplace in the embedded industry. A good example is the new 6U CompactPCI Express (CPCIe) processor board announced here by One Stop Systems. The board offers two PCI Express x8 links and four x4 links to the backplane while providing Core Duo performance. A rear transition module provides two gigabit Ethernet ports and two USB ports in addition to the one of each on the main board. The rear module also supports a CompactFlash module and/or a 2-1/2” SATA hard drive using the hard drive mezzanine...Read More

Today’s trek through the aisles of embedded treasures revealed more evidence of the industry’s transition to serial switched fabric technology. For example, a group of twelve board and component manufacturers led by WinSystems, VIA Technologies, VersaLogic, and Ampro just banded together to form the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG) to develop open standards for the latest fabric technologies while maintaining compatibility with the enormous inventory of legacy equipment. One of their first efforts is the SU...Read More

As we recover from last night’s Innovation Awards Ceremony and congratulate the winners, the new product announcements continue to pour in. Extending the range of their popular postage-stamp sized modules, Digi International just introduced the XBee-PRO XSC, a 900 MHz embedded RF module that provides up to 15 miles RF line-of-sight transmission. Customers can now choose 802.15.4, ZigBee, and long-range point-to-multipoint platforms in the XBee form factor. The new module can be used as a pure cable replacement for simple serial communication or as part of a more complex hub- and-spoke network. ...Read More

The Silicon Valley version of the Embedded Systems Conference is cranking up and my inbox is already flooded with press releases. To give you a taste of what’s new this year, I plan to highlight a few of these announcements during the week. For example, Express Logic, a San Diego-based developer of real-time operating systems has decided to jump into the development tools market for embedded systems.  Earlier today they announced the BenchX Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on the Eclipse open source platform. BenchX is tailored for embedded develop...Read More

In a move to reduce non-recurring development and recurring royalty costs, Ampro recently announced that it will support all of its products with an embedded Linux operating system. Derived from Ubuntu packages, Ampro Embedded Linux is a free, open-source, reduced-footprint operating system enhanced with device-oriented features such as its default touch-enabled graphical user interface, plus other selected technologies from the Ubuntu Mobile & Embedded (UME) project. Ampro's reduced-footprint embedded Linux distribution currently includes som...Read More

With the explosive growth of vehicle navigation and entertainment electronics, standardized interfaces and data transport protocols are required to permit interoperability between in-car and portable devices. To this end, the Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) Cooperation provides a multimedia and infotainment networking standard for the automotive industry. The standard provides an efficient and cost-effective fabric to transmit audio, video, data, and control information between any devices attached. Its synchronous nature allows for simple devices to be able to deliver content and others to render that content with a minimum of hardware. Revision 3.0 of MOST is a complete overhaul of the specification structure offering several new fea...Read More

Like it or not, if you are a successful design engineer you will eventually be asked to lead a development project. Unfortunately design engineering and project management require two different skill sets and many engineers are woefully unprepared for that first big leadership assignment. To help with this transition, Timothy Stapko of Digi International has written a detailed article for EDN entitled “Avoiding pitfalls in managing embedded systems projects”. According to Stapko, “Project Management has become so important across a multitude of disciplines that it has achieved the status ...Read More

Ray Alderman, the executive director of VITA, recently authored a whitepaper providing an update on the state of the VME Technology industry along with a view of the board industry in general. In the paper entitled “2008 State of the VME Technology Industry” Ray offers several market forecasts: “I predict that the market for VME products will grow about 10% in 2008 from the current base of $1 billion. A large portion of that growth will be in new VME Technologies and in maintaining legacy programs in the MIL/COTS and industrial market segments”. He also outlines the new architectural standards in work at the VITA Standards Organization (VSO) including the completion...Read More

RapidIO is a popular high speed serial interconnect used for both chip-to-chip and board-to-board communications. Featuring performance levels at ten Gigabits per second and beyond, RapidIO is a low latency, memory-address based protocol that is transparent to application software. However there are some software issues that developers should be acquainted with before integrating the RapidIO protocol into new designs. For example, the discovery and enumeration requirements are unique to RapidIO and should be understood when incorporating the architecture into new board and system-level designs. To explain all this Jim Parisien of Fabric Embedded Tools has just finished a new article for EDN...Read More