On Target: Embedded Systems

Got Ugly Code? Test to See if Quality Runs Deep

In today’s celebrity culture, inner beauty isn’t always a valued trait. But when it comes to embedded software development, beauty is truly on the inside. High quality, well-designed and reliable products necessitate high-quality and highly secure embedded software. Development Testing is one of the most effective ways to achieve this. Development Testing is a rapidly emerging category, including a set of processes and software, designed to easily find and fix quality and security problems early in the development cycle, as the code is being written. All this serves to dramatically improve time to market, reduce development costs and improve customer... Read more →

Expect Quick Response to MISRA C: 2012

Introducing MISRA C: 2012 Yesterday, the Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) announced the availability of MISRA C: 2012, an important update to the software development standard for the C programming language. Beyond providing support for the C99 version of C, the improvements also aim to reduce the cost and complexity required to achieve compliance. VDC’s View MISRA adoption has spread far and wide since being introduced in the 1990s to provide guidelines for the development of embedded software in the European automotive industry. Since that time, the value proposition of a standard set of quality assurance coding rules has... Read more →

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 Security: The Bark is Bigger than the Bite, Part 1

Security has been top of mind with most executives of leading embedded suppliers who we spoke to in the past year. This should come as little surprise given the growing awareness of the potential impact of security breaches. As today’s devices and systems grow more complex and connected, this threat is growing exponentially. Time and again, we hear of some hacker or industrious engineering student demonstrating, either maliciously or as an educational warning, that a linked network may only be as secure as its most vulnerable element. In a recent conversation with one of the foremost automated test and verification... Read more →

VDC’s Top 12 of 2012 – Part 1

The end of the year is always a great time for reflection, for thinking about everything that happened throughout the year and what it all means. It is also a great time for making lists; Christmas lists, New Year’s resolutions, and Best Ofs. I won’t get into my New Year’s resolutions here, but I will take a few moments to highlight (and rank, just for fun) the most significant embedded software announcements of the past year. So, without further ado, here is our take on the best of 2012! 12. GrammaTech introduces architecture visualization system for CodeSonar (March 27th) This... Read more →

The Embedded Software Beat

A Q&A with Paul Anderson, VP of Engineering, GrammaTech This interview is the third 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: GrammaTech has been in the source code analysis business for over 20 years; can you briefly introduce the company to our readers? Anderson: We were founded as a spin-off from Cornell University to commercialize the results of research into interactive development environments. Since then we have done a lot of research into software analysis... 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 →

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 →

Quality, Quality, Quality: The 3 Most Important Factors for Automated Test Tools

It’s common knowledge that code bases have continued to grow in size and complexity and that more product end value is reliant upon software. This growth requires organizations to commit more and more of their time and resources to software development. With OEMs under mounting pressure to find new and more efficient ways to maximize their software content creation without proportionate increases in software engineering man-power, engineering organizations are utilizing more third-party code sources as well as more sophisticated tools that can generate production ready code from higher level designs. In fact, embedded engineers responding to VDC’s 2012 Software and... Read more →

ALM/PLM integration, who's going to lead?

Complexity driving need for greater tool integration The complexity of today’s embedded devices and systems has escalated across all industries, coupled with a growing requirement for connectivity and mobility. To meet these challenges, developers’ use of software and system lifecycle management (SSLM) tools has expanded across a broader range of challenges than the specific engineering tasks for which they were originally developed. To support this usage, many suppliers are shifting away from point solution offerings towards integrated platform/suite solutions addressing a broader portion of the software development lifecycle. A need for cross-domain integration As the growing level of system complexity... Read more →