On Target: Embedded Systems

Telecom Engineering Trends Webinar -Tomorrow 3/31 2:00pm ET

During this free webcast, Chris Rommel and Rutul Dave of Coverity will discuss the latest technological, engineering, and business trends facing the telecommunications industry.

Specifically, they will address:

• Embedded Engineering trends
• Telecom and network industry’s challenges and costs due to bad software
• Why traditional defect detection methods aren’t scalable for large complex codes  
• Most effective tools for detecting crash causing software bugs early in the development cycle

 

Webinar Details

Wednesday, March 31st

2:00pm ET /  11:00am PT

 

Click on the link below for more information and to register:

http://bit.ly/a7YEMx

Tool and Service Suppliers To Rebalance Their Offerings?

As the embedded markets emerge from the recession, we look for the shape and form of new revenue and profit opportunities. 

 

We see indications that some of the differences in technical requirement and commercial opportunity that differentiated (and insulated) the embedded markets from enterprise markets -- and the larger economy on some levels -- have been worn away by the latest recession. 

 

Indeed, the 'borders' of these markets have become quite porous during the past decade, with some transfer points created by the recession, and pre-existing others made wider by it. 

 

Each quarter brings another announcement of an enterprise vendor launching extended lifecycle support for one platform or another.

 

At the same time, embedded developer requirements for native, embedded 10G Ethernet, for example, highlights at least reduced resistance for, and more likely acceptance of, enterprise industry 'standards' for a broad range of capabilities. 

 

What does this mean for the business models of suppliers of embedded software platforms, tools and higher-level solutions?  We are not sure.  However, if the idea that broader requirements sets from the embedded markets are 'merging' with enterprise, we think it means some business model revisions may be required as well. 

 

Last week saw the release of a study of the broader outsourcing market that reported the vast, disparate community of companies offering technology outsourcing services, or products as services, would have a new name: External Service Providers.  And that this community would enjoy strong, stable, profitable growth opportunities for most of the next decade.

 

These companies would be offering hybrid combinations of standard service packages, customized services, traditional software products and products packaged as services (including SaaS and a host of Managed Services).

 

It all reads like a post-recession repositioning resulting from the re-aggregation of the IT services and communications industry, in the opinion of this reader.

 

But if we take this article as foundation for a future embedded market scenario, is it instructive?  And of what?

 

We met dozens of embedded software suppliers and services providers during our junket to Nuremberg.  Our teams exchange ideas with these companies daily.  What we know is a community of software companies that for more than a decade have been toiling -- driven by their own business models and by the demands of their clients -- to continue to explore productizing their capabilities and offer their clients' more powerful tools that they can deploy more independently.

 

Services remain a core part of the revenue profile of the most successful companies, but, the type of services migrated.  No longer was license maintenance the bulk of revenue for these companies.  In the eyes of the customer base -- the developers of the embedded systems -- services revenue migrated away from these pre-competitive, undifferentiated requirements, and moved up the value stack to enable developers to layer in more and better performance in their embedded devices. 

 

However, when the recession hit the embedded engineering community, and it did, they reacted with broad, swift, slashing strokes that eliminated perhaps billions of dollars in services contract fees for third-parties. 

 

Many projects were delayed.  Others scaled back.  Some cancelled.  And more than a few OEMs brought some of the outsourced services back 'in-house' in order to fill up some of their newly discovered excess capacity versus release talented developers. 

 

In response, a growing number of third-party embedded engineering service providers surveyed their proprietary toolboxes for marketable family jewels -- if you will.  After all, had the market not told the embedded tool service provider community that their preference was for much lower spending in attached services, tool products that they could operate more powerfully and with less dependence on fee-based support services from their tool suppliers?

 

What is a supplier of services to the embedded engineering community to do?  Invest in services capacity, for, as the enterprise market goes, and merges with at least the outer edges of the embedded market, so goes the larger embedded market?  Invest in productizing the most marketable and profit-potential proprietary methods and processes to meet, and perhaps accelerate the embedded market demand for software tool products?

 

It seems that the porous border between embedded and enterprise requirements definition can create as much potential for dissonance as for opportunity and profit. 

 

I think of the Slovenian firm, HERMES-Softlab, when I consider the implications for the community of companies that provide tool products and services to developers of embedded devices, systems and solutions. 

 

HERMES-Softlab has more than 1,000 developers, consultants and project managers.  The firm supports hundreds of projects annually.  Such was the strength of Hermes offering that the company's coverage area has grown far beyond its Balkan home markets to most regional markets between Russia and the Atlantic.  In fact, HERMES-Softlab business grew across the Atlantic as well. 

 

Until the recession, when third-party contracts came under the knife in the embedded markets. 

 

HERMES-Softlab responded with revised strategies that support two parallel approaches:

1.  Reinforcement for the primary value propositions of its core services:  proven time to market compression, 

cost reduction, design stability and client system performance

2.  Launch of a HERMES-Softlab-branded automated test tool suite, based on the accumulated experience and

intelligence of its 1,000+ organization of developers and managers

 

We like HERMES-Softlab's strategy, for it recognizes the duality of the new reality in the embedded markets.  As they emerge from what is clearly the worst economy since the inception of the 'embedded markets', software tool and service providers need to position themselves with products that continue to consolidate and automate lower-level, pre-competitive tasking, and higher-level services that enable embedded device suppliers to maximize their solution development capabilities and their return on assets. 

 

The embedded and enterprise markets may be merging and creating hybrid markets with blended product and service requirements from traditional embedded and enterprise markets.  Many in the tools and service supplier community may need to as well.

Synopsys Completes Acquisition of CoWare

What Happened?

 

Yesterday, Synopsys announced that it had completed the acquisition of CoWare that it had originally announced on February 8th.

 

VDC's View

 

The acquisition of CoWare, a leading ESL and virtual platform solution provider, will help further strengthen Synopsys' System-Level Design Division that was already bolstered by the addition of VaST's tool suite last month.

 

Whereas Synopsys' recent acquisitions certainly underscore their commitment to ESL and, more specifically, virtual platform technology, VDC expects that the future success of these acquisitions will rest on Synopsys' ability to manage the inherited client and partner relationships and minimize any uncertainty surrounding the company's long-term commitment to the newly acquired tool suites.

 

To read more about VDC's views on the recent ESL and embedded market shake ups, please visit the other postings linked below.

 

Related Posts:

• Synopsys Doubles Down, Acquires CoWare
• Further Shakeup in the VSPS Market – Intel acquiring Virtutech
• Synopsys Acquires VaST, becoming #1 in VSPS Market
• Embedded Market Consolidation Continues
• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 2
• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 1
• Synopsys to Acquire Synplicity
• Virtutech Announces Standards Initiative for Virtualized Software Development

Webinar on Effective Software Analysis for Telecommunications Systems

During this free webcast, Chris Rommel and Rutul Dave of Coverity will discuss the latest technological, engineering, and business trends facing the telecommunications industry.

Specifically, they will address:

• Embedded Engineering trends
• Telecom and network industry’s challenges and costs due to bad software
• Why traditional defect detection methods aren’t scalable for large complex codes  
• Most effective tools for detecting crash causing software bugs early in the development cycle

 

Webinar Details

Wednesday, March 31st

2:00pm ET /  11:00am PT

 

Click on the link below for more information and to register:

http://bit.ly/a7YEMx

Embedded World Bulletin – March 2010

VDC attended the 2010 embedded world Exhibition & Conference in Nuremberg, Germany March 2^nd and 3^rd. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

 

This is the first time VDC Research has attended embedded world and according to the show closing report, there were 730 international exhibiting companies and 18,350 trade visitors. Both represent a record number of exhibitors and visitors participating in the exhibition and conference over previous years.

 

The show floor consisted of four interconnected halls with exhibitors logically grouped by the type of products offered. Over the course of two days VDC met with over 20 exhibitors and stopped in to chat with a number of others.

 

Wow! What a high energy event! The exhibitor halls quickly filled up with attendees in the morning hours. Many booths were filled with engineers presenting opportunities for exhibitors. Most exhibitors had big broad smiles when asked about the potential for quality leads. All and all, an exciting show for all participating in the conference!

 

However, these types of shows also offer an opportunity for exhibitors and non-exhibiting companies to examine their strategic partnerships including strengthening, expanding, and establishing new alliances. It also serves as a checkpoint for scoping out your competitors as well as new potential entrants. 

 

The 2010 Embedded Systems Conference/Silicon Valley is just around the corner. We hope that embedded world is a prelude to the type of energy and interest to be expressed by attendees at ESC/SV. If so it could just be the medicine that the embedded market needs for growth in 2010!

 

The complete press release and more information & downloads for embedded world can be found here.

 

WALKING THE FLOOR

 

Atego announced that it had acquired Blue River Software, a provider of embedded software development tools and related services based out of Nuremberg, Germany. This is just the latest in a recent spree of M&A activity undertaken by Atego/Artisan’s leadership.  To see our coverage of this and their previous moves, including a Q&A with Atego Chairman James Gambrell, please visit the links here.

 

Auriga, Inc. was co-located in the Birdstep Technology booth and was demonstrating with their partner the Raima Database Manager Embedded on Android. Auriga is an IT outsourcing services provider with operating software development centers in Russia since 1990 and was incorporated in the US in 1993.

 

dSPACE announced that the company is cooperating with Elektrobit in offering a coordinated AUTOSAR tool chain for developers of automotive electronic control unit software. In addition the company announced that they are also working NAVTEQ to create an integrated development platform for digital map-enhanced driver assistance systems.

 

Enea announced their hypervisor that implements multiple high performance computing environments on top of multicore processors. The hypervisor is based on OSE micro kernel technology and runs OSE applications at native speeds. In addition the company announced that they had been selected by FatSkunk, a supplier of anti-malware technology for mobile phones, to ensure delivery of its Android proof of concept.

 

Esterel Technologies featured announcements around their upcoming release of SCADE, version 6.2 which will incorporate enhancements to both SCADE Suite and SCADE Display with respect to integration with other tools in the development tool chain. The release features support for the SCADE Suite Rapid Prototyper and enhancements to the SCADE Suite Model Test Coverage. In addition the company announced that it is launching the Aerospace and Defense DO-178C Readiness program where Esterel will assist companies in their preparation for development of safety critical software under the pending DO-178C standard.

 

ETAS, a subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH, conducted a number of product demonstrations at the conference including a prototype of their RTA operating system for multicore CPU’s and AUTOSAR.

 

GrammaTech, Inc. announced that CodeSonar, the company’s flagship source code analyzer, has been selected by major U.S., European and Asia/PAC medical device manufacturers.

 

Green Hills Software had several announcements at the conference. On the first day the company announced that the INTEGRITY RTOS received CENELEC EN 50128 (railway industry standard) SWSIL 4 certification. This press release was complemented by an announcement that Bombardier had selected the Green Hills Platform for Industrial Safety which will be used in the development of their next generation train control management system. Other announcements at the show included a partnering agreement with IS2T to provide their hard real-time Micro-Jvm for use with the INTEGRITY RTOS and the availability of the INTEGRITY RTOS for the CPU Tech Acalis CPU872 secure processor.

 

IAR Systems had several announcements at the show including commercial-grade integration of Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS and IAR Embedded Workbench IDE with support for 32-bit architectures, including ARM’s ARM7, ARM9 and Cortex-M3, Freescale’s ColdFire, NEC’s V850, and Renesas’s H8. In addition the company announced that their integrated development environment IAR Embedded Workbench has been selected as a part of Fujitsu’s SK-86R03 'Jade-L Starterkit' package.

 

IntervalZero announced that Acontis Technologies GmbH released its EtherCAT Master Stack AT-EM for IntervalZero’s RTX hard real-time software for Windows.

 

Keil, an ARM Company announced the release of MDK-ARM v4.10 which is the first software development tool to support the ARM Cortex M4 processor.  In addition the company announced the C51 V9.01 Professional Developer’s Kit with support for the Infineon XC82x and XC83x series. The XC82x and XC83x series expands Infineon's 8-bit XC800 microcontroller family to provide more scalable performance for cost-sensitive automotive applications.

 

LDRA and Visure Solutions announced the release of Embed-X, an end-to-end application lifecycle management (ALM) system for the embedded space. Embed-X, like other ALM solutions, merges product requirements, business objectives and metrics in a uniform actionable perspective. Embed-X also delivers these ALM objectives with full certification support for critical development standards in the avionics, defense, automotive and medical markets.

 

Mentor Graphics received the embedded award 2010 in the software category at the show for their Inflexion GUI Technology for Android. The Inflexion GUI is comprised of an embedded user interface (UI) engine and designer tool for the rapid creation and customization of visually rich, highly-usable GUIs for all types of Android devices featuring a graphical display.

 

QNX Software Systems, a Harman International (NYSE:HAR) company, announced its new smart energy reference, a pre-integrated software stack that makes it easier to design, deploy, and extend smart-home energy management systems. The company also announced that Texas Instruments is providing pre-integrated hardware support for the QNX CAR application platform. The collaboration will allow QNX CAR participants to take advantage of TI’s AM3517 and OMAP3530 processors, both of which are based on the highly popular ARM architecture.

 

Real Time Systems GmbH recently announced an alliance with QNX Software Systems and demonstrated their recently released RTS Hypervisor version 2.2 running the QNX Neutrino RTOS on the same hardware as Windows, and is also capable of running Linux and other operating systems.

 

SYSGO AG announced that B. Braun selected the company to develop the software application related to SpaceCom, one of the key components for its automated infusion systems. The company also announced the version 3.1 of their PikeOS that integrates multi-core support which is part of the DO-178B certified code base.

 

TenAsys announced the availability of eVM for Windows, an embedded virtualization manager that enables different RTOSs to run alongside Windows on the same multi-core processor platform. The eVM for Windows’ embedded virtualization technology utilizes hardware-assisted features built into Intel processors to allocate hardware resources and is available for download from the company’s new online store. In addition the company announced support for new Intel Atom processors with their INTime RTOS.

 

ULMA Embedded Solutions was present at the exhibition with their manufacturing partner Trelec. The company was founded in 2009 from the ULMA Group Business Incubator and focuses on providing embedded systems engineering services.

 

Wittenstein High Integrity Systems, a subsidiary of the German industrial technology group, Wittenstein AG, announced OpenRTOS support for the Renesas SH7216 microcontroller. In addition the company announced a SafeRTOS Design Assurance Pack for the SafeRTOS kernel that meets US FSA510 (k) Class III and European IEC EN62304 medical device certification requirements to run on Cortex-M3 and ARM7 based microprocessors.

 

Other leading embedded systems exhibitors included aicas GmbH, Altera, Analog Devices, Arrow Embedded Solutions, AvNet Embedded, Birdstep Technology, CMX Systems, CoFluent Design, Coverity, Datalight, DENX, eCosCentric, Express Logic, Freescale,  GEENSOFT, IBM, Intel Corporation, itemis AG, Klocwork,  Kontron AG, Lauterbach GmbH, LDRA, LynuxWorks, Marvell, McObject,  Micrium, Microsoft, MKS GmbH, National Instruments Germany, Nokia Norge AS, Parasoft, Perforce Software Europe, PragmaDev, RadiSys GmbH, Serena Software GmbH, SparxSystems GmbH, Target Compiler Technologies, TASKING by Altium, Texas Instruments, The MathWorks GmbH, Vector Software, Willert Software Tools , Wind River GmbH, Xilinx Europe,  and many, many others.

Embedded Industry Expert Opinions Needed

VDC is conducting its annual survey of mobile and embedded engineers so if you are involved in the engineering of mobile or embedded systems/software, this is your chance to influence key solution suppliers.

The research covers embedded software, hardware, tools, and development practices. Your thoughts will improve our insights into the engineering community and help to influence next generation solutions.

In addition, VDC will provide all respondents who complete the survey:

* Instant access to a summary of VDC's 2009 survey findings;

* Entry into a prize drawing for one of five $100 Amazon.com gift certificates (drawing to be held August 15th, 2010); and

* A summary of the 2010 survey findings once the survey is complete later this year

To begin the survey, go to:http://vdcresearch.com/survey/10_esdt.html?RID=OT

Thank you very much for your assistance.

Best Regards,

The VDC Embedded Software and Tools Research Team

Another PLD start up – Can Tabula Succeed Where Others Have Failed?

What Happened?

 

After nearly seven years in stealth mode, yesterday Tabula announced its first product offering, Spacetime, a programmable logic architecture that uses time as a third dimension for configurability.

 

VDC’s Views

 

The PLD, or more specifically, the FPGA market has evolved into something most closely resembling a duopoly where two companies, Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) and Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR), have dominated market revenue and unit shipments.

 

So what appears to be so different with Tabula, who is entering a market where so many other companies have failed (Ambric, MathStar, and Velogix to name only a few)?  The company claims that it has to do with a fundamental difference in their approach to the PLD’s architecture and functionality. 

 

Supposedly, the rapid rate of reconfiguration in their technology allows portions of a function to be executed by different “folds” within the processor across time, so that the results for each part of the function can be locally stored and used to rapidly and efficiently execute the next portion of the function.

 

Although Tabula claims that their compiler can automatically map standard RTL to their new device thereby reducing some of the potential impact on the engineering process, the ultimate adoption of this technology will likely be limited be the same factors that have affected many new start-ups in this arena:

 

• Potential impact on project workflow versus established processes
• Issues pertaining to integration with current tools
• Implications regarding any legacy code bases (including those for hardware, software, and algorithm engineering) and the investment they represent
• Lack of partner evangelism or strong ecosystem
• Potential effect on project schedules and time to market
• Risk inherent to engineering organization when changing any processing platform or component, especially in an unstable economy when start ups (or any other company) can fail.

 

While there is certainly an opportunity for new PLD technology to enter the market and steal share from the incumbents and/or from ASIC shipments, Tabula and any other start up will need to obtain significant buy-in from leading software and system tool vendors and embedded OS suppliers in order to build up the sufficient ground swell and robust ecosystem needed to drive substantial adoption over the long term.

Embedded M&A Continues - Atego Makes Another Acquisition

What Happened?

 

At embedded world this week, Atego announced that it had acquired Blue River Software, a provider of embedded software development tools and related services based out of Nuremberg, Germany.

 

VDC’s View

 

Artisan, Aonix, Atego – It doesn’t matter what you call it, this company, or rather this amalgamation of companies, continues to scoop up small companies to expand its size, geographic footprint, as well as the breadth of its technological capabilities.

 

Although the acquisition will only have a small impact on Atego’s bottom line, it is more noteworthy because it marks a further expansion of Atego’s solutions beyond model-based design (from Artisan) and the niche, but stable Ada and real-time Java (from Aonix).  By expanding their tools and capabilities for C and C++, Atego can potentially enhance their relevance to and gain entry into the vast majority of embedded projects that today use C and C++, which were reported to be used by 86% and 42%, respectively, of the engineers that responded to our 2009 Embedded Engineering Survey.

 

This acquisition will also serve to further expand the company’s presence in the German automotive market that was initially strengthened by the acquisition of EXTESSY AG in November of last year.  Blue River also reportedly derives additional business from the industrial automation/control and telecommunications vertical markets.

 

This is just the latest in a recent spree of M&A activity undertaken by Atego/Artisan’s leadership.  To see our coverage of their previous moves, including a Q&A with Atego Chairman James Gambrell, as well as our coverage of other recent industry consolidation, please visit the links below:

 

• Embedded Market Consolidation Continues
• Artisan Acts Rational, Acquiring Companies to Broaden Solution Set
• Synopsys Doubles Down, Acquires CoWare
• Further Shakeup in the VSPS Market – Intel acquiring Virtutech
• Synopsys Acquires VaST, becoming #1 in VSPS Market
• Embedded Market Consolidation Continues
• Cavium Networks Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire MontaVista Software: Part 2
• Cavium Networks Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire MontaVista Software
• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 2
• Intel to Acquire Wind River Systems ~ Update 1