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Embedded Systems Articles

• Securing IoT Devices With ARM TrustZone (Aug. 18, 2014)
  As we observe the world in which we live, and in particular the electronic devices that surround us, we cannot help but be amazed at how quickly technology has evolved and how this pace of evolution continues to accelerate.
  
  
• Porting designs to the 32-Bit world without adding cost (Aug. 18, 2014)
  An 8- or 16-bit CPU may be ideal for your application at present. However, to stay competitive, you need to differentiate your product with continuous enhancements, including new features, faster speeds, improving product specifications, and reducing cost. If you don’t provide these, your competitors will.
  
  
• Do you really need source code? (Aug. 11, 2014)
  If you ask any embedded software developer whether they would like access to the source code for the real time operating system that they have selected, the answer would almost certainly be yes. Likewise for any other software IP. This article investigates whether this is a sensible answer in all cases and looks at when and why source code is needed and why sometimes it may be less useful than anticipated.
  
  
• Inside-Out Security for the IoT (Aug. 06, 2014)
  Many Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are real-world objects like appliances and thermostats, and therefore network security should be a paramount concern for vendors of IoT systems. Nothing erodes trust faster than real-world and personal consequences: Imagine the headlines if your refrigerator stopped working because of a software bug!
  
  
• Scalable Cloud Services for the Internet of Things through CoAP (Aug. 04, 2014)
  In this paper, we study the benefits of CoAP’s low overhead for IoT cloud services, in particular scalability to handle huge numbers of concurrently connected IoT devices.
  
  
• Development of a Hybrid Drive that Combines Large Capacity and High-Speed Performance (Jul. 14, 2014)
  The hybrid drive, which combines the cost advantage of rotating magnetic disc storage with the high performance of NAND flash memory, has recently been attracting attention from computer users looking for fast, large capacity drives. The combination of a hard disk drive (HDD) and NAND flash memory has the potential to deliver a solid-state drive (SSD) like user experience.
  
  
• Enabling a new generation of connected devices (Jul. 07, 2014)
  We're at the beginning of a new technological revolution: an era where thousands of hitherto disparate and unrelated devices will become connected and able to share information via cloud-based services. Imagine a world where your tablet is automatically populated with the latest movies, simply because you placed a diary entry on your smartphone indicating you were taking a long-haul flight. Or where your home routinely switches into an energy-saving mode after the last person departs the house, and predicts when someone is likely to return based upon GPS data from their smartphone. Or a message indicating all is well with a dependent relative, triggered automatically by them following their normal morning routine of taking their medication, turning on the TV and boiling the kettle.
  
  
• Five steps to reliable, low-cost, bug-free software with static code analysis (Jul. 07, 2014)
  The effective use of static source code analysis to deal with the increasing complexity of software and the need to make sure code is reliable and bug free without seriously delaying product development.
  
  
• The basics of designing wearable electronics with microcontrollers (Jun. 18, 2014)
  ‘Wearable’ devices are miniature electronic devices worn on the body, often integrated with or designed to replace existing accessories such as a watch. This market segment is booming, enabled by Internet of Things technology. Thus the need for smaller, more intuitive devices is rapidly increasing. Some of the current trends are smart watches, smart glasses, and sports and fitness activity trackers. In addition to the consumer market, the medical industry is creating a demand for devices that monitor physical conditions and functions.
  
  
• The need for speed in low latency video system designs (Jun. 17, 2014)
  Lag-time in video games and video conferencing is annoying. Lag-time in avionics, medical devices, and industrial video systems is mission-critical. That’s why low latency video systems are proliferating in applications where live video feeds need to be processed and analyzed in real time. This article discusses some of the various contributors to latency in video systems, and ways of minimizing their impact at the video source and playback ends.
  
  
• Home automation system design: the basics (Jun. 12, 2014)
  Home automation is a method of controlling home appliances automatically for the convenience of users. This technology makes life easier for the user, and saves energy by utilizing devices according to strict requirements. Controls can be as basic as dimming lights with a remote or as complex as setting up a network of items in the home that can be programmed using a main controller or even via cell phone from anywhere in the world.
  
  
• Dealing with automotive software complexity with virtual prototyping - Part 3: Embedded software testing (May. 26, 2014)
  In Part 3 Victor Reyes looks at how virtual HIL techniques can be applied to the important tasks of automotive software testing and verifying functional safety.
  
  
• Dealing with automotive software complexity with virtual prototyping - Part 2: An AUTOSAR use case (May. 26, 2014)
  In Part 2, Victor Reyes compares looks at the problems of doing hardware dependent software development in an AUTOSAR environment and how virtual Hardware-in-the-Loop (vHIL) methods deals with the complexities.
  
  
• Dealing with automotive software complexity with virtual prototyping - Part 1: Virtual HIL development basics (May. 26, 2014)
  In Part 1, Victor Reyes compares how a virtual Hardware-in-the-Loop (vHIL) approach can replace traditional HIL, Processor-in-the-Loop, and Model-in-the-Loop techniques in complex automobile system designs.
  
  
• Optimizing embedded software for power efficiency: Part 4 - Peripheral and algorithmic optimization (May. 15, 2014)
  In the final part in a series on how to manage your embedded software design’s power requirements, the authors discuss the how operations of the system’s peripheral functions can contribute to power savings, concluding with some techniques for algorithmic optimization.
  
  
• Optimizing embedded software for power efficiency: Part 3 - Optimizing data flow and memory (May. 15, 2014)
  In this third in a series on how to manage your embedded software design’s power requirements, the authors discuss how attention to the flow of data through the processor and how its memory can be used to manage power consumption efficiency.
  
  
• Optimizing embedded software for power efficiency: Part 2 - Minimizing hardware power (May. 12, 2014)
  Data flow optimization focuses on working to minimize the power cost of utilizing different memories, buses, and peripherals where data can be stored or transmitted by taking advantage of relevant features and concepts. Algorithmic optimization refers to making changes in code to affect how the cores process data, such as how instructions or loops are handled. Hardware optimization, as discussed here, focuses more on how to optimize clock control and power features provided in the microprocessor or peripheral circuits.
  
  
• Optimizing embedded software for power efficiency: Part 1 - measuring power (May. 12, 2014)
  One of the most important considerations in the product lifecycle of an embedded project is to understand and optimize the power consumption of the device. Power consumption is highly visible for hand-held devices which require battery power to be able to guarantee certain minimum usage/idle times between recharging.
  
  
• Developing a heterogeneous multicore SoC for use in a mobile environment (Apr. 28, 2014)
  Imagination's Peter McGuinness recounts his company's experience in porting disparate applications to run delegated to the GPU and reports on lessons learned.
  
  
• Programming heterogeneous multicore embedded SoCs (Apr. 28, 2014)
  Over the last decade, the market demand for increased processing performance with reduced power and area footprint has remained strong and embedded SoCs have stepped up to the challenge. This performance, power and area (PPA) improvement has been achieved by adding cores – both general purpose cores and specialized cores such as DSPs and GPUs among other things. This trend has resulted in networks of heterogeneous multicore embedded SoCs.
  
  
• Semiconductor Reliability and Quality Assurance--Failure Mode, Mechanism and Analysis (FMMEA) (Apr. 21, 2014)
  This article introduces how to implement FMMEA in detail, including system definition, identification of potential failure modes, analysis of failure cause, failure mechanism, and failure effect analysis. Finite element analysis is carried out, including thermal stress analysis and vibration stress analysis on a semiconductor device. Temperature distribution and vibration modes are obtained, which are the inputs of physics of failure models.
  
  
• Security demands hardware improvements (Apr. 07, 2014)
  Complex, Real-World Security Threats Impact Network Design: High performance security features – integrated into silicon hardware – allow network managers to more thoroughly and more intelligently inspect, encrypt, authenticate and secure Internet traffic at wire speeds.
  
  
• Designing with ARM Cortex-M based SoC Achitectures: Part 2 - Some typical applications (Apr. 02, 2014)
  In this second in a two part series, Tushar Rastogi and Subbarao Lanka of Cypress Semiconductor compare the capabilities of a standard microcontroller approach to the design of an embedded application to that of a system on chip approach, using the company’s PSoC architecture.
  
  
• Designing with ARM Cortex-M based System-On-Chips (SoCs) - Part I: The basics (Mar. 31, 2014)
  In this first of a two-part Product How-To article series, Tushar Rastogi and Subbarao Lanka of Cypress Semiconductor describe the fundamentals of developing processor-based system-on-chip designs using the company’s PSoC architecture.
  
  
• A systems approach to embedded code fault detection (Mar. 24, 2014)
  The aim of this paper is to suggest a simple approach to the problem of fault detection and provide some hints on how to design debug features into embedded systems which have real-time constraints and suffer from lack of memory resources.
  
  
• PCI Express vs. Ethernet: A showdown or coexistence? (Mar. 17, 2014)
  Until now, the boundaries between PCI Express (PCIe) and Ethernet were clearly defined -- PCIe as a chip-to-chip interconnect, and Ethernet as a system-to-system technology. There are good reasons (and a few less good) why these two technologies have both endured and co-existed. While nothing is on the horizon that will change this, PCIe is showing signs of growing and competing with Ethernet for space that was once solely the domain of Ethernet – specifically, within the rack. Can it really compete with and win against Ethernet?
  
  
• Using domain-specific modeling languages for medical device development (Mar. 10, 2014)
  Domain-Specific Languages have become a common tool in the toolbox of software developers. There is a natural reason for this: they are more expressive and therefore tackle complexity better, making software development easier and more convenient.
  
  
• Using model-driven development to reduce system software security vulnerabilities (Mar. 10, 2014)
  This article is based on material contributed by Guy Broadfoot to Embedded Systems Security, by David and and Mike Kleidermacher. He outlines how many features of model-driven development tools can also be used to create reliable software code for security- and safety-critical applications.
  
  
• Using static analysis to detect coding errors in open source security-critical server applications (Mar. 06, 2014)
  Excerpted from their book Embedded Systems Security, the authors go through an analysis of three popular, security-critical open source applications - Apache, OpenSSL, and sendmail – and demonstrate how static analysis of the underlying C code can be used to find bugs that are often overlook doing a manual inspection.
  
  
• System configurations for power systems based on PMBus 1.3 (Feb. 28, 2014)
  This article shows several ways to implement a power management controller using the new PMBus Revision 1.3 specification, and addresses several new considerations with architecting a system using this new specification.