Industry Expert Blogs

It is increasingly common to utilize existing software components in a new embedded design. These may be internally developed or are quite likely to come from an external source. Such software IP – like an RTOS, for example – is typically distributed in one of two forms: a binary library or source code. The question is: which of these is acceptable? If the conclusion is that source code is required, care is needed with exactly what will be delivered …

Most developers, if asked whether they would like to have source code for some software IP, would answer a very firm “yes”. It is not entirely clear why this is the case. Often, in life in general, using something that is just a “black box” is entirely acceptable; we just expect things that we use to do what they are supposed to do in the way the documentation says. Surely software could be seen in this way; make a call with some specific data as parameters and an expected result will occur. Hardware engineers use integrated circuits without expecting to see [or understand] the circuit diagram. Of course, this is all great if the black box does what the documentation says it should do!

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