On Target: Embedded Systems

Aonix ObjectAda Now Available for VxWorks/PowerPC

Aonix ObjectAda for Windows now supports Wind River’s Tornado 2.x and VxWorks 5.x environments.

Looks like a strong indication that there is a substantial installed base of Wind River legacy product in the Mil/Aero market. VDC believes that customers in the Mil/Aero market are moving to the 6.0 release, but it looks like a number of OEMs are sticking with the older platform. Witness the strength in Q3 FY06 in WIND's Aerospace and Defense business. The legacy product could be on long-term contracts/projects.

VxWorks 6.0 support is expected in early 2006.

The main points are summarized below:

• ObjectAda for Windows 8.2 includes the comprehensive Ada libraries needed for calling Windows Win32 and the Visual C++ .NE 2003 MFC interfaces from application source code written in Ada.
• ObjectAda 8.2 Windows cross PowerPC/VxWorks is available under the CorePack packaging that includes an Ada 95 compiler, Ada 95 optimizer, partial annex C support, partial annex D support, syntactic editor, graphical and command line interfaces, library configuration tool, program builder, source browsing engine, source registration tool, source un-registration tool, source code reference tool, symbolic debugger, and graphical installer.
• ObjectAda Windows cross PowerPC/VxWorks starts at $15,000
• Available immediately for Windows 2000 and XP host platforms

Can the DD(X) deliver on its mission?

Bob Novak wrote a piece on the battle between battleships and the DD(X) program. Many embedded vendors have a stake in the DD(X) so this is worth writing about. The DD(X) is also one of the platforms for evaluating embedded real time Java. There is a lot of food for thought here. A couple of items caught VDC's eye:

On the modernized battleships, 18 big (16-inch) guns could fire 460 projectiles in nine minutes and take out hardened targets in North Korea. In contrast, the DD(X) will fire only 70 long-range attack projectiles at $1 million a minute. The new destroyer will rely on conventional 155-millimeter rounds that Marines say cannot reach the shore. Former longtime National Security Council staffer William L. Stearman, now executive director of the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association, told me, "In short, this enormously expensive ship cannot fulfill its primary mission: provide naval surface fire support for the Marine Corps." (VDC added the emphasis)

and

Never has it been clearer how the military-industrial complex functions. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics and BAE Systems are mobilized behind DD(X). Congressional staffers, eyeing a future in the Pentagon or the armaments industry, know the way to future advancement is not to be pro-battleship.

Paravirtual Reemerges

VDC spoke with Ross Wheeler from Paravirtual this morning. The company, formerly Accenia, has reemerged as a player in the virtual platforms sector of the market. Like other players in virtual software platforms (Virtio, Vast, Virtutech, etc.) they are trying to solve the problem of developing software without having physical reference hardware available. Paravirtual is positioned to address development on top of the OS, as well as on peripheral chips. The company supports VxWorks, Nucleus, ThreadX and Linux.

Welcome Back.

Are companies using commercial Linux considering migrating to non-commercial Linux distributions?

Vendors of commercial Linux distributions face many challenges as the Linux market continues to evolve. One of the most challenging issues will be their ability to compete with the open source community and provide value above what is already available from public sources.

While many customers will continue to look to a commercial supplier to support the ongoing development of their Linux kernel, there exists the potential for many to opt to bring this development in-house as internal developers gain more experience with maintaining the Linux kernel themselves.

VDC’s most recent end-user survey indicates that while users of publicly sourced Linux distributions are highly likely to use non-commercial Linux in the future, commercial Linux users seem to have less confidence that they will use commercial suppliers on future projects.

Enea CEO wants to get the heads of the five DSO families together

And anyone else with an interest in DSO)

In an article over on DSO.com Enea CEO Johan Wall is sounding the call for a DSO Summit to get the heads of the five DSO families together (as well as other vendors who are interested) to discuss how to take the idea to the next level. Currently, the DSO converts are Wind River, Green Hills, Enea, Intel, and IBM at least by my count. But I bet a number of other companies would be willing to jump on board if a stable and credible organization could be formed. After all it ends up being very cost effective marketing. Wall likens the organization that might be formed to a software SEMI offering standards, shows, advocacy, education, etc.

The embedded or DSO industry is highly fragmented. Hundreds of companies offering thousands of products. Some have full product lines, some offer point solutions. There are dozens of applicable standards that companies are supporting. Some are major standards like POSIX, or DO-178B, OSEK, CGL, etc. while others are niche standards like the emerging LiPS and OSDL standards for Linux on mobile phones.

There have been attempts to create an embedded software industry group. All have failed. In many ways the eclipse foundation has emerged as an industry organization even though embedded or device software is only part of its mission. Eclipse is broadly supported by vendors in the embedded systems market and many of the key vendors have embraced the IDE including Wind River, MontaVista, QNX, etc. But eclipse, is in reality, too narrowly focused on tools. The scope needs to be larger and more inclusive.

Establishing a DSO industry organization is a good goal to have. Hopefully, it will bring some focus to the fragmentation that plagues this sector. Vendors in this market have as much in common as they have in competition. It will help raise the visibility of software to its proper level of importance in the OEM community. Despite the skyrocketing cost of code and its position as the key driver of new features, software remains largely invisible in the product development process. However, getting all of the players to sit down at a single table will be tough. The most recent sign is the blow up between Wind River and Green Hills over DSO. But perhaps the pull of common interest will be stronger than the pull of competition.

And the Eclipse Community Award Goes To

Get you nominations together for the Eclipse Community Awards.

They will be presented at EclipseCon in the spring.

Deadline is January 27, 2006

Great Article on Build vs. Buy

Jack Ganssle has a great column on embedded.com on build vs. buy decision making. Some of these decisions seem so easy to make and yet time and time again engineering managers opt to invest many times the cost of a commercial product, in engineering expense, to go the build route.

There are hundreds of RTOSs in the market with just about as many price points and business models. There must an operating system for every possible project that can be quickly and economically purchased and yet in the end many managers have a hard time parting with cash. It seems that we undervalue engineering time, while at the same we discount the utility of cash. We forget that it is just one more tool in our toolbox. It's changing, but not fast enough.

I-Logix and McObject Forge Partnership

I-Logix, the UML tool vendor has been building deep relationships with some of its partners. Earlier this fall VDC covered their new partnership with Green Hills Software. See the coverage here.

Now I-Logix has introduced awareness of McObject's eXtremeDB into Rhapsody. Here is the beginning of the release:

Object Integrates eXtremeDB with I-Logix’s Rhapsody UML-Based Model-Driven Development Environment

Issaquah, WA - December 12, 2005

McObject, developer of the eXtremeDB in-memory embedded database, announced it has integrated eXtremeDB with I-Logix’s Rhapsody, a Unified Modeling Language (UML™)-based, award winning, Model-Driven Development (MDD) environment. The coupling of eXtremeDB and Rhapsody enables faster time-to-market of high quality embedded applications that require embedded data management. For the rest.

Wind River Regional Developer Conference

VDC attended the Wind River Regional Developer Conference in Westford, MA this morning. The conference was well attended with about 150 developers packing the presentation room. John Fanelli, VP of Product Planning and Management at Wind River was the primary host of this stop. Next to the presentation room was a partner pavilion or in Wind parlance "Smart Bar" with many key WIND partners including I-Logix, Express Logic, Encirq, IBM, Coverity, Skelmir, Virtutech and many others.

The demos during the presentations were very strong and well executed. The best one VDC saw was on Workbench Diagnostics a tool that permits dynamic root cause analysis of software bugs. If you can catch a WR RDC near you this demo should not be missed. You need to see it to get the full impact. The next RDC is in Chicago tomorrow.

db4objects Update

db4objects, the commercial company supporting the db4o open source database, recently announced new extensions to the core object database. While VDC does not typically cover new product announcements, there are a couple of interesting points emerging here. db4obejcts is to db4o as Sleepycat is to BerkeleyDB - a company that provides a commercial-grade version of an open source database. What makes db4o somewhat unique is that it is an object database originally targeting client/embedded devices. The original db4o database was well designed for its original purposes: small footprint, very fast, support for .NET and Java. However, as developers started working with the database in actual devices, they found that they needed additional features, including a query language. To meet this need:

Native Queries will provide db4o with a query language that leverages the native OO programming language (Java/C#/.Net) that the developer is already using. Native Queries, based on the Safe Queries work by Prof. William Cook, is 100% OO because they come straight from the OO language already being used. The concept is similar to Microsoft’s DLINQ concept that will be in .NET3 in 2007. However, Native Queries are targeted at OO databases not relational ones. VDC expects db4o will be 100% compatible to DLINQ, but will also provide native OO support through native queries.

William Cook and db4objects chief software architect Carl Rosenberger have written a joint white paper: www.db4o.com/about/productinformation/whitepapers/#nq