Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) – San Jose 2010
VDC attended the 2010 Embedded Systems Conference in
Conference organizers were reporting early on that registration and attendance at the show are up over 30% year over year, which is very good news for the supplier community. Similar themes and messaging continue to be delivered by market participants around multicore, virtualization, safety, security and reliability. But many discussions we had at the show focused on industry consolidation and new and emerging strategic alliances between the semiconductor and software communities.
The Silicon Valley conference has always been the premier event in the
Exhibitors we met with at the conference expressed a positive view in terms of show attendance and the number and quality of leads. An improving economic climate and outlook has resulted in OEMs looking to ramp investments in new project starts which is the best news of all considering a very challenging 2009!
Next up ESC Chicago, June 7-9, at the
THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:
Best of Show
VDC awarded our software “Embeddy” best of show live on the conference floor to Viosoft for their Arriba source-level debugger customized for Android and Linux. As device manufacturers look to take Android into new application classes beyond mobile, it is critical for development teams to gain insight into, and control of, all Android software under the hood, both Java and C/C++. The Viosoft solution not only addresses these important insight and control issues, but also addresses the additional development challenges that come with the growing adoption of multicore in embedded devices.
Honorable Mention
Real-time Operating System vendor Express Logic announced TraceX/MC, a multicore-enabled and expanded version of its powerful TraceX graphical real-time event analysis tool. TraceX/MC enables embedded developers to visualize and better understand the behavior of their real-time systems by showing thread and core activity graphically across a common timescale. In addition, the company announced availability of its ThreadX RTOS for the MIPS32 1004K Coherent Processing System (CPS) and the availability of market-specific Safety-Critical Certification Pack products for its popular ThreadX RTOS for the North American market to cover RTCA’s DO-178B, FDA 510(k) Pre-Market Notification and Approval, and IEC-61508 for avionics, medical and industrial automation equipment.
IAR Systems announced technology designed to enable software developers to reduce power consumption in embedded systems. The new functionality in IAR Embedded Workbench couples power consumption directly to the application software, and enables the developer to analyze power consumption and correlate it with program execution. Using this approach, developers can tune and optimize the application’s power profile. The technology will be integrated in IAR’s core Embedded Workbench product and will require the purchase of a new probe to obtain its full functionality.
Best Demos
Memoright Corporation was demonstrating their Solid State Drive (SSD) in their booth under extreme environmental conditions where one drive was submerged in hot water and another sitting on top of dry ice. These drives took a licking during the course of the conference and just kept operating.
Texas Instruments was demonstrating their Chronos development watch in their booth. The watch is a highly integrated, wearable wireless development system in a sports watch. It may be used as a reference platform for watch systems, a personal display for personal area networks, or as a wireless sensor node for remote data collection. The Chronos watch may be disassembled to be reprogrammed with a custom application and includes an eZ430 USB programming interface.
WALKING THE FLOOR
AdaCore, a leading supplier of
AMD announced two new complete platforms for the embedded market, the compact ASB2 platform and the high-performance AM3 platform, that offer myriad combinations of power and performance over previous generations. AMD’s new embedded platforms consist of chipset and graphics solutions along with high-performance CPUs as low as 8W TDP for the ideal solution based on application requirements.
ARM announced the launch of the ARM CoreSight System Trace Macrocell and Trace Memory Controller providing software and system on chip developers with an industry-standard debug and optimization SoC platform solution and demonstrating Keil software development tools including the recently announced Development Studio 5 tool suite. In addition the company announced that over 70 ARM Connected Community members were demonstrating ARM technology at the 2010 ESC/SV.
Arrayent introduced VDC to their Arrayent Internet-Connect System which enables electronic products to connect wirelessly to web applications hosted in the Internet cloud at low cost and reliability. These web applications are used by consumers to monitor and control their electronic devices from any smartphone or web browser.
Atego announced the release and availability of their Aonix PERC Ultra SMP 5.4 with support for concurrent multi-processor garbage collection technology for multiprocessor and multicore solutions in complex mission-critical embedded and real-time Java applications.
Atmel announced several new microcontroller products, solutions and platforms at the conference including the SAM9M11 and SAM9G46 ARM-based MPUs, the Atmel BitCloud Profile Suite for rapid development of ZigBee-certified applications, and the availability of Synapse”s SNAP operating system to be embedded into the Atmel ATmega128RFA1 single-chip AVR microcontroller.
Dell OEM Solutions attended ESC for the first time and introduced OEMs to Dell’s solutions to provide support from design through deployment for embedded devices/systems. In addition, Rick Froehlich, Vice President and General Manager Dell, delivered an industry address at the conference titled “Drive Innovation with Dell OEM Solutions”.
Emerson Network Power announced that they had extended their portfolio of embedded single-board computers based on Intel Core i7 processors with the launch of their first 3U CompactPCI blade, the CPCI7203. This is also the company’s first product to support the new CompactPCI PlusIO specification (PICMG 2.30), which supports data transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps.
RTOS and tools supplier Enea made several announcements at the show including a strategic agreement with Freescale Semiconductor and support for their QorIQ multicore processors and MSC825x multicore DSP family. In addition the company announced a strategic collaboration with NetLogic Microsystems across the XLP, XLR, and XLS multicore, multithreaded processor families.
Eurotech announced the ZyWAN G9 Cellular Router offering data solutions to 3G, CDMA and GSM/GPRS cellular networks. The rugged ZyWAN G9 provides real-time access and location-based information to any Ethernet, 802.11 or serial device for mobile and fixed data applications.
Freescale Semiconductor announced new strategic alliances with Enea, Green Hills Software, and Mentor Graphics. In addition the company announced a new family of programmable DSPs targeted at a broad range of medical, military/aerospace, and test measurement applications and a collaboration effort with CriticalBlue to make their Prism development environment available to support Freescale’s QorIQ multicore processor families.
Static analysis tool vendor GrammaTech announced their newest version of CodeSonar that will include an improved user interface to streamline developer interaction and increase productivity by presenting all static analysis checking results in a way that will enable developers to quickly view key information and understand and identify the most important issues to address and prioritize fixes.
Green Hills Software made series of announcements at the conference including a multi-year strategic alliance with Freescale Semiconductor; the selection of the company’s INTEGRITY RTOS and MULTI IDE for the Joint Strike Missile program by Kongsberg Defence Systems; the availability of INTEGRITY board support packages on all Extreme Engineering Solutions embedded computing products based on the Intel Core i7 processor; the availability of Green Hills multicore development solutions for Cavium Networks OCTEON family of multicore processors; and the company’s partnership with Silex Technology to offer support and services for Wi-Fi-enabled products based on the Atheros family of radio modules.
Klocwork announced the extension of its static analysis capabilities to support compliance with the Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) coding standards. Klocwork Insight now provides built-in, automated detection and reporting for MISRA–C:2004 and MISRA–C++:2008.
LDRA Software Technology announced a partnership with Codice Software, developer of the Plastic SCM, software change and configuration management solution, to provide Agile development capability to Embed-X. In addition the company announced Java support for the LDRA tool suite LDRA’s that enables developers to extend the same software verification and testing tools across the entire application, whether it is in C/C++,
LynuxWorks announced availability of LynxSecure 4.0, its embedded virtualization solution for single and multicore processors. The new release adds support for the Intel Core i7 and i5 processor families and enables new configurations of guest operating systems to maximize the usage of these processors. In addition the company announced that it has combined efforts with Portwell, Inc. to deliver a proof-of-concept (PoC) wireless sensor platform for hospitals based on Intel technology.
Mentor Graphics announced that it has signed a multi-year strategic partnership agreement with Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. as a key strategic commercial Linux partner. Under the agreement, the Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division will provide commercial, Linux-based software products supporting the Freescale QorIQ and PowerQUICC processors. In addition, just prior to the conference, the company announced the Mentor Embedded Nucleus SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) technology and support for the Multicore Communications Application Programming Interface (MCAPI) standard for inter-processor communication (IPC), established by the Multicore Association.
Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of Windows Embedded Standard 7, delivering the power, familiarity and reliability of the Windows 7 operating system in a highly customizable and componentized form. OEMs can leverage Windows Embedded Standard 7 to create differentiated experiences and enhanced connectivity with Windows-based PCs, servers and online services on specialized devices, such as thin clients, digital signage and industrial controls for the enterprise, as well as set-top boxes (STBs), connected media devices (CMDs), and TVs for consumers.
MIPS Technologies announced that a strategic alliance with Imagination Technologies Ltd. was formed to provide system solution and support for customers combining IP from both companies and that the company has joined Imagination's POWERVR Insider graphics developer ecosystem as a technology partner.
MontaVista Software announced a new rapid deployment program for Android that delivers commercial quality Android reference platforms for Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) and MIPS processors, an Automated Test and Validation Suite (ATVS) which expands the company’s existing commercialization services for Android.
Netronome announced at the conference their Network Flow Engine (NFE-3240) family of PCIe 2.0 acceleration cards with enhanced I/O virtualization (IOV) support and a partnership with Titan IC Systems to deliver a new solution that features the seamless integration of Netronome’s NFP-3240 network flow processors and Titan IC’s Regular Expression Processor (RXP) technology.
QNX Software Systems announced a version of its operating system and development tools for the automotive, industrial, medical, networking, and defense markets. Version 6.5 of the QNX Neutrino real-time operating system (RTOS) and the QNX Momentics Tool Suite introduces new capabilities, including support for ARM Cortex-A9 processors and Freescale Power e500MC processor cores, a Persistent Publish/Subscribe service, a variety of performance optimizations, and an enhanced tool chain that includes Eclipse CDT 6.0 and GCC 4.4.2.
Raima Inc. (Birdstep Technology) provided a preview of the next version of RDM Embedded database in their booth and demonstration of their dataflow technology that has been extended to include support for the MontaVista Linux 6 platform.
Synopsys announced the availability of the high-performance DesignWare Universal DDR Protocol and Memory Controllers, both supporting the DDR2, DDR3, Mobile DDR and LPDDR2 SDRAM standards. In addition, just prior to the conference Synopsys announced enhanced FPGA synthesis support is available for Actel Corporation's new SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGAs.
WITTENSTEIN High Integrity Systems announced the availability of OpenRTOS and FreeRTOS support for the Cortus APS3 32-bit CPU for small footprint, low power applications. In addition the company announced a new book, a practical guide to developing embedded applications using the OpenRTOS kernel.
Other leading embedded systems vendors in attendance at ESC/San Jose included aicas, Arium, CMX Systems, CoFluent Design, Concurrent Computer Corporation, Datalight, Digi International, eCosCentric, Electric Cloud, EMA Design Automation, IBM Rational Software, Intel, Kalray, Kontron, Lauterbach, Macraigor Systems, MapuSoft Technologies, Marvell Semiconductor, McObject, Micrium, Microchip Technology, National Instruments, NXP Semiconductors, Perforce Software, PolyCore Software, Programming Research (PRQA), Real-Time Systems GmbH, SEGGER Microcontroller, Signum Systems, Target Compiler Technologies, TenAsys, Xilinx, Inc., and others.
TRADEMARK ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Many names of companies, associations, technologies, products, and product types, etc. mentioned in this bulletin comprise Trademarks, registered or non-registered, owned by various entities. These are too numerous to mention individually. VDC acknowledges that ownership of these Trademarks exists and requests that readers acknowledge this as well.
ABOUT VDC
The Embedded Systems Industry Bulletin is published as part of VDC’s Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service. VDC has been providing embedded systems market intelligence for over 20 years.
Published by VDC Research Group, Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.
Editors:
Stephen Balacco
Chris Rommel
Jared Weiner
VDC Research Group
T: 508.653.9000 ¨ F: 508.653.9836 ¨ E: info@vdcresearch.com ¨ W: www.vdcresearch.com
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