Embedded Systems

The first wave of devices compliant with the HyperTransport Specification 2.0, which defines performance levels of up to 2.8 Gigatransfers/s and mapping to PCI Express, are now available from seven HyperTransport Consortium members. Technology from AMD, Agilent, Dolphin Technology, FuturePlus Systems, GDA Technologies, ULi and VIA, includes HyperTransport-enabled 64-bit processors, I/O chipsets, silicon IP and development tools. HyperTransport chip-to-chip interconnect ...

When MISRA-C was launched in 1998, the UK automotive coding guidelines for C in vehicle systems contained 128 rules for writing good C code. Although a number of development tools support it and many compiler vendors have changed their library source to be MISRA-C compliant, the first version of the coding guidelines was not perfect. After four years in the ...

Designers of safety-critical automotive systems would do well to look to the medical device industry rather than aerospace for inspiration, claims a report from Cambridge Consultants (CCL). “The automotive industry has been trying to learn lessons, and is going to the wrong place,” author Dr Peter Bell told EW. “The aerospace industry designs safety in from the bottom up, but ...

Designers needing a real-time operating system should follow the open source, royalty free model, according to Cambridge-based eCosCentric. The company, which helps maintain the eCos operating system, said third party RTOSs, while offering similar technical features, can lock designers into one set of tools. “The fact that eCos is free and open source, with a flexible licence, is significant,” said ...

The European Commission’s nextTTA project, intended to develop the next level of time-triggered architecture (TTA) for transport electronics, is complete. The two-year project “proved that event-triggered communication such as industry standard CAN can be combined with TTA to provide an easy migration path from current CAN-based applications to time-triggered systems”, said German TTA firm and project member TTTech Computertechnik. As ...

Amino Communications, the Cambridge TV-over-Internet specialist, is about to bring out a set-top box with a hard disk drive to add user-control to its basic home gateway product. “In the fourth quarter we’ll be shipping a set-top box with an 80Gbyte hard disk,” David Cormie, marketing manager at Amino, told Electronics Weekly. “It will give the user more control.” The ...

“The time is right” for network computing if Linux and the growing Chinese market can be harnessed. That is according to PMC-Sierra, which is promoting its collaboration to revive the concept of network computing with MIPS Technologies, ATI Technologies and China’s Tsinghua University. It is called the Open Source Network Computing Intiative. “I believe the time is right in these ...

Developers of operating systems for embedded systems in the automotive market have had to come to terms with that perennial networking problem – the moving target. When adding the optimum comms network to their vehicle designs, the car manufacturers have moved very quickly up through the gears, from the CAN bus to LIN. But as the use of electronic systems ...

Embedded software projects are running late, over-budget and with high failure rates, according to a survey by Verum Consultants. The firm’s conclusion come after analysing a number of European projects in consumer, automotive, medical, telecoms and industrial automation markets. “We decided to do a survey to find the major issues in the industry,” said Rob Howe, chief executive at Verum. ...

MontaVista Software has opened a sales office in Bracknell as it builds on what it sees as growing interest in embedded Linux software design in the UK. The Linux software specialist said the intention is to focus marketing and support effort for its full range of software, including all editions of MontaVista Linux, along with complementary technology products such as ...