On Target: Embedded Systems

VDC to Present Embeddy Awards Live at Design West

Want to see the latest technologies and tricks for embedded engineering? Head to Design West next month in San Jose, CA! Contact us ASAP to schedule a meeting VDC will be attending the Design West/ESC conference from Tuesday April 23 through Thursday April 25. At the show, we will be presenting our 9th annual Embeddy Awards. The winners will be announced Live during Thursday's morning keynote session. So how can your company win the Embeddy award? To be considered, First, fill out this on-line form: http://svy.mk/WU0abA You must also schedule a meeting with VDC to discuss the announcement that you... Read more →

Embedded Bits n Bytes – In case you missed these recent announcements……

AdaCore, provider of tools and expertise for the mission-critical, safety-critical, and security-critical software communities, announced the successful usage of its SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro High-Security products by Rockwell Collins in the development of the SecureOne™ Guard, a high assurance cross domain guard for military tactical systems. http://www.adacore.com/press/secureone/ ARM (NASDAQ: ARMH) and Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS) signed a multi-year agreement that expands Synopsys’ access to a broad range of ARM intellectual property (IP). http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-and-synopsys-expand-collaboration-to-optimize-power-and-performance-and-accelerate-design-and.php Atego, a supplier of software tools and professional services for complex, mission- and safety-critical systems and software engineering launched Aonix ObjectAda® 8.5 for Windows with new... Read more →

Software Development Tools Market Update

Competitive Market Dynamics at Work Recently published research by VDC Research Group continues to indicate the market for commercial standalone software development tools remains under pressure and challenged as a result of competitive market dynamics. The embedded market has evolved since the early nineties when market players were compartmented and offered RTOSs or software development tools. Over time, players converged at the center, either through acquisitions and mergers, internal development or some combination of both, in offering a software solution that spans operating systems and tool chains. Regardless of the direction of convergence, the focus was on providing an integrated... Read more →

The Embedded Software Beat

A Q&A with John Blevins, Director of Marketing, LynuxWorks This interview is the second in a series that we look to conduct during the course of 2012 with embedded software solution providers to share their views on their company, products, and state of the market. VDC: LynuxWorks has been in the RTOS business for over 20 years; can you briefly introduce the company to our readers? Blevins: LynuxWorks was founded in 1988 as Lynx Real Time Systems, and the first product, LynxOS, was designed to give embedded developers a high performance yet full featured Real Time Operating System. LynxOS offered... Read more →

Embedded Bits and Bytes – In case you missed these recent announcements……

AdaCore, provider of tools and expertise for the mission-critical, safety-critical, and security-critical software communities, announced that SmartSide, a Paris-based company providing Smart Metering and Smart Grid management solutions, has adopted the Ada programming language and AdaCore’s GNAT Pro development environment for the implementation of their Smart Devices platform. http://www.adacore.com/press/smartside-adopts-ada-gnat-pro/ ARM (NASDAQ: ARMH) announced that their relationship with Cavium has been extended to include an architecture license for the ARMv8. http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-and-cavium-extend-relationship-with-armv8-architecture-license.php Atego, a supplier of software tools and professional services for complex, mission- and safety-critical systems and software engineering has entered into an agreement with International Business Machines Corporation to acquire... Read more →

Navigating the FUD on Multicore Software Development

As you may have seen on our blog or in our research, one trend that we have been following over recent years is the usage of multicore processor configurations within the embedded market. Clearly this is a topic that has received a significant amount of industry attention over recent years, largely led by silicon manufacturers’ marketing initiatives as well as the community’s general familiarity with the technology from PC and server class devices. As many of you all know, the embedded market is a different animal entirely. The inherent diversity of the embedded market has likewise led to there being... Read more →

Embedded/Real-time Operating System Market - Uneven Growth in 2011 – Slower Growth Expected Over the Forecast Period

In 2011, growth in the market was uneven and the rate of growth below what VDC had forecasted from last year. Suppliers in the market expressed mixed views on the state of the market in 2011 and the challenges they faced during the course of the year. VDC estimates that the market for embedded/real-time operating systems was greater than $1 billion in 2011, an increase of slightly more that 5% from a revised 2010 estimate. Over the forecast period we expect this market segment to grow at a combined annual rate of less than 6% per year through 2014. OEMs... Read more →

Embedded Bits and Bytes – In case you missed these announcements from the last several weeks...

AdaCore, provider of tools and expertise for the mission-critical, safety-critical, and security-critical software communities, announced that Embraer Defense and Security has selected the GNAT Pro Ada development environment from AdaCore as a primary tool set to develop the Operation Flight Program for the AMX Modernization program. http://www.adacore.com/press/embraer-amx-upgrade/ ARM announced the availability of a high performance, power-optimized quad-core hard macro implementation of its flagship ARM® Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processor. http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-announces-cortex-a15-quad-core-hard-macro.php Atego, the world leading software tools and professional services supplier for complex, mission- and safety-critical systems and software engineering has launched the DO-178 Process Library for its ground breaking process definition, management... Read more →

Engineer Experience with More Complex Architectures

Every year VDC conducts an extensive worldwide survey of embedded engineers and their development projects to better understand engineering requirements, preferences, and trends. This information is available from VDC in unique cross tabbed reports to offer readers a detailed, in-depth, view of engineers in the development project trenches. Quite often we receive requests from suppliers within the embedded software and hardware community around the use of multicore and multiprocessing architectures and embedded engineer experience working with these complex architectures within their development projects. Based on survey responses, engineers continue to expect migration from single processor designs for future projects to... Read more →

Will Quad-core Phones Give QNX another Shot at Saving RIM?

In a blog last week, we highlighted the lack of consumer electronic devices shipping today with multicore chipsets. Smartphones, on the other hand, have already begun to make that transition and the inclusion of these new processors has even emerged as a point of marketing for many OEMs. To date, however, these mobile multicore devices have mostly used dual-core processors. As there are more and more announcements (and speculations) about the forthcoming inclusion of quad-core processors in mobile phones, we are left wondering how or if this change could impact the supplier landscape. The multifaceted impact of multicore processors Whereas... Read more →