Embedded World Technology Articles

Breeding success: Embedded World 2012 preview

14/02/2012

This year's embedded world exhibition and conference takes place in Nuremberg from 28 February to 1 March. The tenth running of the event is set to be bigger and more international than ever, according to the organiser. Exhibition manager Alexander Mattausch noted that exhibitor numbers are 23% up on the same time in 2011, with appreciable growth in the number of international companies.

Offloading tasks from the microcontroller can improve power efficiency

14/02/2012

The single biggest concern among microcontroller users used to be system cost, but energy consumption has steadily become a bigger issue.

Mixed signal asics meet cost and performance targets

24/01/2012

Custom analogue/mixed signal asics are economical at comparatively low volumes, with affordable non recoverable engineering (NRE) costs, meaning a custom chip design can be considered more readily than previously.

EV battery management essential for desired lifetime and charge cycles

22/11/2011

For hybrid (HEV) and full electric vehicles (EVs), Li-Ion batteries offer the best trade off of power, energy density, efficiency and environmental impact. But Li-Ion batteries can be delicate and dangerous, while automobiles can be cruel and unforgiving. The challenge is to bridge the gap between the two environments.

General purpose oscilloscope helps with low speed serial bus debugging

22/11/2011

Using an oscilloscope to analyse and debug a low speed serial link is standard fare and today's general purpose digital oscilloscopes contain a variety of features that allow the user to quickly verify a link or to troubleshoot a faulty system.

Altera embeds ARM processors to create ‘distinct class of device’

08/11/2011

Towards the end of 2010, Altera announced what it called its Embedded Initiative, the aim of which was to speed the take up of programmable logic devices within the embedded systems market.

Concurrency checkers can improve multicore process performance

27/09/2011

To take advantage of performance improvements provided by multicore processors, it is essential to have a good command of concurrency. Yet most developers are accustomed to reasoning about programs from the perspective of a single thread of execution and may use techniques and tools that are themselves fundamentally based on a single threaded worldview.

GPUs set to enter the mainstream

13/09/2011

Until recently, demand for more processor performance has been met by faster clocking, more bit width and ever smaller fabrication nodes. The introduction of multicore x86 devices has also helped to boost performance while keeping power consumption at a reasonable level.

High performance computing comes to the military embedded market

13/09/2011

When military customers discuss new embedded radar, communications intelligence (comint), signal intelligence (sigint) and situational awareness systems, they are demanding the levels of performance provided by the High Performance Computing (HPC) systems used in demanding commercial applications.

Issues and solutions for variation aware custom IC design

30/08/2011

In today's highly competitive semiconductor industry, profitability hinges largely on advantageous design performance, high yield and rapid time to market. As leading edge designs push into smaller process nodes, this is becoming even more evident.

The 10 best ways to make your device drivers unreliable

30/08/2011

Device drivers, the foundation of many embedded systems, are expected to be robust and stable while also delivering high performance.

Facebook's new data centre is home to numerous innovations

09/08/2011

It is reasonable to assume that anyone reading this article has dealings, in some way, with a data centre. Whether it's through the use of social networking sites, buying goods and services online or accessing 'cloud computing', the data centre is an integral part of our lives.

Real time operating system architectures are important for medical designers

09/08/2011

Medical device manufacturers understand the importance of the operating system (OS) and, contrary to common practice for embedded systems design, often select the OS before they choose the board.

The perils involved when pushing direct conversion to the Nyquist limit

09/08/2011

Direct conversion, or zero IF, receivers are popular in applications where the need to reduce power consumption, reduce costs and extend battery life are behind requests to use 'all the Nyquist bandwidth' from an a/d converter.

The best route to avoiding counterfeit electronics

11/07/2011

It's been discussed and analysed for years, yet there does not seem to be an end in sight for the trade in counterfeit electronics.

Digital technology helps guitarists achieve pure analogue clarity

29/06/2011

Producing a pure, organic and natural sound from an electric guitar has long been considered the Holy Grail for musicians. Traditionally, guitarists try to accomplish this by adjusting tone levels on the instrument and amplifier manually, or by applying EQ and compression via effects pedals.

CMOS technology enables higher data rates over poorer quality optical fibre

14/06/2011

Pressure is growing on the companies which supply telecommunications operators (telcos) to develop equipment which carries more data at lower overall cost. In a way, it's the same story heard in every other area of the electronics market, but in this instance, it's on a much larger scale.

New Electronics Roundtable: More support needed as analogue design gets harder

14/06/2011

There is a perception that analogue design is getting harder; alongside the usual time to market issues, the devices with which designers work are becoming more complex and there is a diminishing skills base.

Turning off the shelf components into application specific data acquisition solutions

14/06/2011

By definition, off the shelf modular instruments are designed to be general purpose, programmable and flexible enough to handle a variety of input ranges and types, speeds and functions. At first sight, these instruments may seem ready to go. However, 100% COTS is generally inadequate for complex, commercialised measurement systems.

Will AMD's Fusion architecture meet the needs of ETX and XTX based designs?

14/06/2011

The discontinuation last year by Intel of the Pentium M and Celeron M processors and the 855/852 chipsets raised doubts about the future of the ETX and XTX board level formats.

Clear force sensing material set to see touch screen functionality included in larger displays

24/05/2011

Touch screens have proved to be a phenomenal success with smartphones and tablets, such as the iPad, changing the way that users interact with devices.

FRAM set to save energy in write intensive mcu applications

06/05/2011

Texas Instruments has launched the first of a series of 16bit microcontrollers that use ferroelectric memory (fram) instead of flash, claiming that the combination will save energy in low duty cycle, write intensive applications such as smart meters.

Data converters set to help meet comms systems challenges

26/04/2011

As the number of mobile phone subscribers continues to climb, pressure is growing on the communications infrastructure to support the amount of data that is expected to be downloaded in the future.

How the dynamics of microcontroller selection are changing

26/04/2011

Outside of the apparent ability of an mcu manufacturer to deliver the right product at the right price, with the right development tools, technical support and so on, the selection of an mcu for a new design has generally started with the evaluation of bit size.

32bit mcu demand drives need for support programmes

12/04/2011

For the last year or so, there has been a continuing flurry of activity as companies introduce more variants of microcontrollers designed around cores from the 32bit ARM Cortex-M portfolio. Cortex-M based microcontrollers offer users a number of benefits, including performance, cost, connectivity and energy efficiency.