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Embedded Systems Articles

• Verifying embedded software functionality: fault localization, metrics and directed testing (Aug. 27, 2012)
  In the third in a four part series Abhik Roychoudhury, author of Embedded Systems and software validation, discusses the pros and cons of metric base fault localization and directed testing for assessing software functionality.
  
  
• Optimizing PCIe SSD performance (Aug. 21, 2012)
  Server and storage systems vendors can add value to what they provide to their customers in the form of performance, scalability, and reliability via their software and hardware architecture. In order for these complex systems to function at their peak, however, two of the largest contributors to these added values—the SSD controller and interconnect—need to be matched and tuned.
  
  
• Co-Designed Cache Coherency Architecture for Embedded Multicore Systems (Aug. 13, 2012)
  In this paper, we present the round-robin method applied to baseline coherency protocol and initial analysis of one hybrid protocol that performs speculative requests when access patterns are detected. We also propose to manage patterns through a dedicated hardware component attached to each core of the processor.
  
  
• Verifying embedded software functionality: Why it's necessary (Aug. 06, 2012)
  In this six part series Abhik Roychoudhury, author of Embedded Systems and software validation,, explains why it is important for embedded developers to learn about new techniques for assessing software functionality. Part 1: what must be done and how to achieve it
  
  
• Modern Techniques to Prevent Hacking in Medical Systems (Jul. 30, 2012)
  The advent of electronics has transformed medical devices to become smarter and more convenient to our daily lives. But recent headlines of hacking point out a consternation of electronics. Medical device designers need to understand new tools and design techniques that can prevent hacking and illicit modification. The issue of hacking and illicit modification is multi-faceted. Is the software protected inside a microcontroller? How can access to a chip be eliminated to prevent hacking? Is there a way to detect code modification? These are chip-level concerns.
  
  
• Verifying serial buses and components in embedded designs (Jul. 02, 2012)
  This article describes three application examples of how signals on peripheral chips can be correlated with serial bus data to verify system operation using a mixed signal oscilloscope.
  
  
• How to test carrier aggregation in LTE-Advanced networks (Jun. 28, 2012)
  For LTE-Advanced, 3GPP Release 10 introduced several new features to augment the existing LTE standard, and these are aimed at raising the peak downlink data rate to 1 Gbps and beyond, as well as reducing latency and improving spectrum efficiency. Targets have also been set enabling the highest possible cell edge user throughput to be achieved.
  
  
• Using formal methods for sophisticated static code analysis (Jun. 07, 2012)
  In this Product How-To design article, Jay Abraham of Mathworks uses the company’s Polyspace code verifier to explain the use formal methods-based static code analysis to ensure high quality and verifiable embedded software.
  
  
• Beat power management challenges in advanced LTE smartphones (May. 29, 2012)
  Mobile applications are the latest phenomenon causing a larger than normal spike in power demand. Multiple power-hungry functions, including high-speed graphics processing and mobile broadband connections, in addition to other radio connections that manage functions such as location, are all running simultaneously.
  
  
• Implementing SPI on an OMAP-based board design (May. 24, 2012)
  In this article Dmitry Pervushin describes how to add to the functionality of an OMAP-based PandaBoard by connecting a real time clock chip to the design via a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) created using the board’s expansion connector.
  
  
• AMBA 4 ACE for Heterogeneous Multiprocessing SoCs (May. 21, 2012)
  AMBA 4 ACE adds system-level coherency support to the AMBA 4 specifications. By enabling cache coherency between the high- performance ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor and software-compatible high- efficiency Cortex-A7 MPCore processor it enables energy savings through heterogeneous multiprocessing, termed ‘big.LITTLE’ by ARM.
  
  
• Landscape for board design changes beyond 10G (May. 09, 2012)
  The advent of 802.3ap Backplane Ethernet and its low-cost implementation at 10 Gbits/second, 10GBase-KR, has forever changed the way system designers think about the next generation of backplanes. While 10GBase-KR originally was promoted as a network-infrastructure backplane to migrate 10G networks to 40G and 100G Ethernet, it now finds greater utility as a backplane for servers and industrial platforms requiring multi-gigabit bandwidth. As systems demand interfaces capable of handling four-channel and 10-channel paths to 40/100G Ethernet, universal adoption of 10GBase-KR seems likely.
  
  
• How secure is AES against brute force attacks? (May. 09, 2012)
  This article describes the strength of the cryptographic system against brute force attacks with different key sizes and the time it takes to successfully mount a brute force attack factoring future advancements in processing speeds.
  
  
• New generation RISC processing power - Green technology engenders new business opportunities (May. 09, 2012)
  In recent years, RISC computing-based products such as smart phones and consumer tablet PCs keep launching in the market. So the companies dealing with RISC computing solutions are reaping the full benefits of today’s trend. What is the current status of Advantech’s efforts in RISC-based computing development?
  
  
• Troubleshoot and verify 8b/10b encoded signals with a real-time oscilloscope (May. 03, 2012)
  Few serial technologies have become more widely adopted than 8b/10b coding, which is now used in standards like PCI-Express, Serial ATA, SAS, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, FireWire, MIPI M-PHY, HDMI, DisplayPort, CIPRI, OBSAI, XAUI, USB3.0 and others.
  
  
• Managing the coming explosion of embedded multicore virtualization (Apr. 19, 2012)
  Virtualization has been a staple of the server world for years. The very promise of a general computing platform that can do many different things for many different users all at the same time creates the need for managing how that’s done, and virtualization has taken on that role.
  
  
• Design considerations for power sensitive embedded devices (Apr. 18, 2012)
  This article discusses design considerations that should be made when beginning a new embedded design. The considerations include choosing the hardware with appropriate capabilities, defining hardware design constraints to allow software to manage power, making the right choice of an operating system and drivers, defining appropriate power usage profiles, choosing measurable power goals, and providing these goals to the software development team to track throughout the development process.
  
  
• Embedded 3D graphics is here, but 2D is still important: Here's why (Apr. 16, 2012)
  In this Product How-To article, Fujitsu’s Waqar Saleem compares 2D and 3D graphics techniques in embedded designs and then describes an approach that combines the benefits of both techniques, using the company’s IRIS fast pixel engine- based MB86R1x and MB9EF126 CPUs to illustrate a typical 2D/3D configuration.
  
  
• Boost MCU security AND performance with hardware accelerated crypto (Apr. 12, 2012)
  In this Product How-To article, TI’s Carlos Betancourt and Greg Turner describe how the hardware accelerated cryptography modules built in to the company’s ARM-based Sitara processor family can be used to accelerate compute-intensive cryptographic algorithms and offload those tasks from the ARM core which can then devote the additional headroom to performance of real-time deterministic control functions.
  
  
• Overcome signal attenuation, noise and jitter interference challenges in USB 3.0 system design (Apr. 05, 2012)
  With all of its added benefits and features, the high-speed differential signal of USB 3.0 also introduces uncontrollable noise and jitter due to signal attenuation, causing USB 3.0 signal voltage swing to overshoot or undershoot the optimal eye opening.
  
  
• Optimizing performance, power, and area in SoC designs using MIPS multi-threaded processors (Apr. 04, 2012)
  This article provides a brief history of hardware based multi-threading and some examples of its commercial adoption so far. It then gives an overview of the fundamental value of multi-threading in hardware, and describes MIPS Technologies’ multi-threading architecture and product offerings. The article also provides several multi-threaded application examples to demonstrate the broad applicability of multi-threading in real-world applications.
  
  
• Efficient C code for ARM devices (Apr. 02, 2012)
  Our industry moves incredibly quickly. The hot topic last year is very rarely so important this year – either we will have solved it or some other issue will have risen to even greater prominence. The issue of efficiency, however, has been a relatively constant theme through my time in the industry, now some 24 years but efficiency has had many faces over that time.
  
  
• Taking advantage of new low-power modes on advanced microcontrollers (Mar. 15, 2012)
  The author describes several common low power operating profiles and how they can be used to optimize a MCU’s operation to meet specific system requirements. He also explains the tradeoffs involved with each, using a special battery life estimator.
  
  
• Seven steps to embedded designs made easier with PSoC Creator (Mar. 15, 2012)
  An embedded system is one with computing hardware that has software �embedded� in it as one of its core components. Because of certain application requirements, engineers have to approach embedded design in a different way than other types of designs.
  
  
• Bare metal embedded software development with & without an RTOS (Mar. 12, 2012)
  In this Product How-To article, TI’s Joseph Coombs describes the problems developers have in meeting the strict real-time requirements of embedded systems and how use of the company’s StarterWare set of lightweight OS-independent libraries and utilities will help in designs based on TI’s ARM, DSP and ARM/DSP processors.
  
  
• Bridging software and hardware to accelerate SoC validation (Feb. 16, 2012)
  This article describes an approach to debugging an SoC using embedded instruments, and shows how the integration of hardware and software debug views can lead to faster and more efficient debug of the entire system.
  
  
• Fixing concurrency defects in multicore design (Feb. 08, 2012)
  There are compelling reasons to move to multicore processor designs, but doing so introduces the risk of concurrency defects in the software. Apparently innocent code can harbor nasty multithreading bugs that are notoriously difficult to diagnose and eliminate when they occur. Paul Anderson of GrammaTech offers methods to avoid these problems.
  
  
• A new way to do firmware development on programmable devices (Feb. 08, 2012)
  In this Product How-To article Mark Saunders describes a new methodology for doing firmware development for the Cypress’ Arm-based Programmable SoCs, using the company’s PSoC Creator in combination with Arm’s uVision IDE.
  
  
• Significance of standardized, interoperable, proven and integration ready stacks for mass adoption of next generation smart surveillance systems (Jan. 03, 2012)
  Digitization drive in the video surveillance industry in the recent years has created innumerable opportunities for several suppliers of network video equipment to hit the market with their offerings. While digitization has many positives like efficient storage, remote access to data, better scalability and networking, the flipside are a variety of integration issues that crop up due to interoperability of equipment from different manufacturers.
  
  
• How to design secure USB-based dongles (Dec. 22, 2011)
  USB Flash drives that implement security features are generally called USB secure dongles or secure dongles. There are various ways to design a secure dongle and the best secure dongle for a specific application balances system cost with the level of security required for a particular application. This article describes techniques for designing secure dongles.