The magazine of record for the embedded computing

The magazine of record for the embedded computing industry

February 2008

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INTELLIGENT CONTROL Keeps

Battery-Powered Devices Going and Going ATCA: Not Just for Telecomm Anymore Standards Move Wireless Networks to Mainstream Middleware Pulls Together Complex Platforms

An RTC Group Publication

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INTELLIGENT CONTROL Keeps Battery-Powered Devices Going and Going

12 ATCA Breaks Out of Telecom

38 XMC/PMCs with x4 sRapidIO Ports and VPX Intelligent I/O Carrier

TABLEOF CONTENTS

46 Multi-Slot PCI Express-to-PCI Extension Systems

FEBRUARY 2008

Departments

7

Editorial Broadband Everywhere? Don’t Hold Your Breath

Technology in Context

System Integration

ATCA Breaks Out of Telecom

Integrating with Middleware

12

ATCA and RapidIO Meet Demanding Semiconductor Applications

Ian Shearer, Mercury Computer Systems

Hardware and 28Prevalidated Middleware Platforms Speed System Integration Jim Lawrence, Enea and Sven Freudenfeld, Kontron

9 Solutions Engineering No Processor Is an Island: Developing Multiple Processor 34 Wireless Sensors Systems with the “New” CORBA Featured Products 38 Standards Will Fuel the Spread of 18 Wireless Network Technologies & Technology Newest Embedded Technology Used by 46Products Industry Watch Industry Leaders Industry Insider Latest Developments in the Embedded Marketplace

Joe Jacob, Objective Interface Systems

Niek Van Dierdonck, GreenPeak

60

News, Views and Comment Big Changes for 2008: New Technology on Nervous Economic Footing

Industry Insight

Mobile Power Management

Mobile and Portable Power Management Systems 24 Optimizing

Advanced Debugging

Event Logging Enables RealTime Systems Analysis 42RTOS John Carbone, Express Logic

Kim Rowe, RoweBots Research

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February 2008

February 2008

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February 2008

HOME OFFICE The RTC Group, 905 Calle Amanecer, Suite 250, San Clemente, CA 92673 Phone: (949) 226-2000 Fax: (949) 226-2050, www.rtcgroup.com EASTERN SALES OFFICE The RTC Group, 96 Dudley Road, Sudbury, MA 01776 Phone: (978) 443-2402 Fax: (978) 443-4844 Editorial Office Warren Andrews, Editorial Director/Associate Publisher 39 Southport Cove, Bonita, FL 34134 Phone: (239) 992-4537 Fax: (239) 992-2396 Tom Williams, Editor-in-Chief 245-M Mt. Hermon Rd., PMB#F, Scotts Valley, CA 95066 Phone: (831) 335-1509 Fax: (408) 904-7214

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February 2008

EDITORIAL

Broadband Everywhere?

Don’t Hold Your Breath

by Tom Williams, Editor-in-Chief

“But if everyone communicates by telephone, we’ll have to wire the whole country!” “But if the public travels by airplane, we’ll have to build airports everywhere!”

T

he reservations above that were expressed about two earlier world-changing technologies. Interestingly, we haven’t seen that kind of reaction to the spread of the Internet. Instead, we are witnessing the kind of hype expected with a new, disruptive technology along with huge expectations accompanied by often unrealistic assumptions.

We needn’t deal with the issue of hype. That’s the usual background noise and the only way to cope with it is to develop the proper set of filters. Just as one example, I recently saw a truck in the area belonging to the local cable monopoly. We won’t name the company, but the sign on the side of the truck read, “[Company Name] Triple Play.”

Ahem.

Those of us in this industry know what the expression “Triple Play” really means. It means data, voice and video over broadband Internet Protocol. The cable company happens to deliver telephone service, cable TV service and Internet access. But that’s NOT what we mean by Triple Play. Now, IMS adds mobile service to the expected IP-based multi/media world. Universal IMS is even further removed from everyday reality.

The latter two phenomena are the result of the potential of a universal broadband Internet. This is complicated by the fact that in some isolated pockets that potential has actually come close to realization. And, inexorably, it will continue to spread and grow.

But it’s not here yet. There are, of course, lots of great examples of the potential from mostly urban areas about how great full broadband service is—and they are quite believable. But get outside those centers and things look quite a bit different.

Out here in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains—just “over the hill” from Silicon Valley—those living outside the centers of Santa Cruz or Monterey, that is, in the hills, have limited options.

I, for instance, live on an idyllic ranch in the hills, but the population is not dense enough for the county’s cable monopoly to bother with supplying its “Triple Play.” Most folks make do with satellite TV, which is not bad. For Internet connection, however, there are basically three options: dial-up, satellite or a form of

line-of-sight wireless that can deliver from 1 to 4 Mbit/s bandwidth. We do have phones (and yes, we have flush toilets), but “wiring the country” for broadband Internet is a different matter altogether. And it will take longer and it will go by much different routes.

Unlike the telephone service, which (at least until recently) was directed by a single, monolithic entity and whose early expansion partially followed the spread of the population, the Internet is very decentralized, allowing huge service providers to exist in markets that make sense to them while smaller ISPs can fit into more local niches that may or may not be attractive to the big players. In the end, they all connect to the same “cloud” and one day we all may have access to the same range of services and speeds. This, by the way, is why open standards like ATCA, AMC and the SAF-based middleware interfaces make such sense. They enable service providers to get into the game at a small scale and are also attractive to larger ISPs and TEMs, who can begin adding value at a higher level and begin competing sooner in their respective markets.

While that may all be just peachy, it is still a long way until outlying areas come in to the broadband fold on a reliable basis.

We hear about “fiber to the home,” but seldom of “fiber to the farm.” I just spent a morning with a guy from my ISP who was trying to get me a better signal on my 900 MHz wireless link. It turns out that due to the trees in the path, he was getting a stronger signal from the reflection off the mountain than when he tried to aim directly at the access antenna. We finally decided we’re going to have to move the antenna to the roof of a neighbor’s house and upgrade service. That’s just for basic Internet—we haven’t even considered the idea of IPTV. While wireless connectivity is definitely a vital part of an overall IP-networked world, I think the bandwidth demands of IPTV, let alone full IMS service, will far outstrip what can be done with wireless. Sound difficult? “But to have IMS, we’d have to lay fiber all over the country!”

February 2008

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IndustryInsider FEBRUARY 2008

Test and Measurement Industry Trends toward Software-Defined Instrumentation and Use of Multicore

in high-end applications in particular for government, aerospace and transportation areas.

Mr. Ulrich Gehrmann, Management Board Chairman of Kontron AG, stated that the acquisition would reinforce Kontron AG in its core business, and would provide Kontron AG with a significant footprint in France. Mr. Gehrmann added that it would compensate Kontron for the sales volume relinquished with the disposal of its mobile computer business in America—this business unit generated sales of USD 25 million in 2006 and was sold in August 2007 to Crane Co. based in Stamford, CT.

Test engineers in industries ranging from aerospace and defense to consumer electronics are facing the challenge of testing increasingly complicated designs with shrinking timelines and budgets. To address these issues, engineers and scientists are incorporating new test and measurement technologies that are capable of meeting complex design requirements without raising costs. National has identified five trends it anticipates will significantly influence the test and measurement industry over the next three years.

To continue realizing performance gains without increased clock rates, processor manufacturers are developing processors with multiple cores on a single chip.

With multicore processors, test engineers can develop automated test applications capable of achieving the highest possible throughput through parallel processing.

One issue facing test engineers is that test instrumentation is not updated as rapidly as the deConnected with technology and vices being tested. TheGet functionality of these complex devices is being defined by the software companies providing solutions now embedded in them, such as most smart phones, which gives design engineers the ability to add Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration features faster than ever before.technologies This is increasingly challenging into products, and companies.

Whether your for goal many test engineers because most stand-alone instruments often lack the measurement capabilities of the most recent stanis to research the latest datasheet from a company, speak directly Catalytic Merges with Application or jump to a firmware company's technical page, be the developed and embedded in dards due towith theanfixed userEngineer, interface and that must Celoxica ESL, Changes goal ofengineers Get Connected is to put to youainsoftware-defined touch with the right resource. them. Thus, test are turning approach to instrumentation, which Name to Agility Design Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology, gives them the to quickly and user interfaces to meet specific Getability Connected will helpcustomize you connect their with theequipment companies and products Solutions application needs integrate testing directly into the design process. you areand searching for.

Following its merger with www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected Another area experiencing rapid expansion in the test industry is the increase in system-level Celoxica’s ESL business, Catatools for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). More manufacturers are including FPGAs on lytic has announced the company has become Agility Design Solumodular instruments and giving engineers the access in software to reprogram them according to tions Inc. The name change retheir requirements. For example, test engineers can embed a custom algorithm into the device to flects the expansion in company perform in-line processing inside the FPGA or emulate part of the system that requires a real-time size, product offering, geographic response. New system-level tools are emerging that provide engineers with the ability to rapidly Get Connected with technology and companies providing solutions now reach and company vision resultconfigure FPGAs without writing low-level VHDL code. recent merger.

Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into products, technologies and companies. Whether ing yourfrom goal isthe to research the latest Test engineers are also facing new challenges as the use of RF and wireless applications speeds theisdevelopdatasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goalAgility of Get Connected to put you is expanding. RF inand traditionally have level been very specialized fields, type butofthe industry touchwireless with the right resource. Whichever of service you require for whatever technology, ment of signal processing algoConnected help you connect with the and productsinto you are searching for. is experiencing Get a trend where will wireless capability is companies being integrated more products.

Soon, rithms offering complete soluwww.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected RF instrumentation could become as ubiquitous as general-purpose instruments such as digital tions for algorithm acceleration, prototyping and implementation multimeters. This growth in adoption requires test engineers to learn wireless protocols and keep in both software and hardware. pace with the rapid introduction of new standards.

The solutions include Agility’s As semiconductor devices become more complex, the process of testing each part completely unique software technologies for with a traditional vector-based methodology is increasingly difficult. Complex systems-on-a-chip Matlab to C and C to FPGA syn(SoCs) and systems-in-a-package (SiPs) require a system-level functional test more closely related thesis and a rich portfolio of synto testing components placed on a printed circuit board than a typical chip test, but they still rethesizable algorithmic functions quire the high speeds demanded in production test for the semiconductor industry. The strategy and FPGA hardware platforms. of testing a device by emulating actual real-world signals provides a better method of functional Agility completes the solutions test for these types of high-speed systems. with services delivered by a team of expert users to help customers meet deadlines and delivery Get Connected companies and Connected Kontron to Acquirewith Thales agreement.GetThales Computers the Thales Group. The considered requirements.

The new Web site products featured in this section. with companies mentioned in this article.

SA will turn over more than €20 acquisition would be subject to Computers is www.agilityds.com. Corporate www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected million in its 2007 financial year. contract finalization, to the inKontron is currently in disheadquarters are located in Palo The company commands strength formation and consultation of cussions with Thales and has Alto, California.

Work Councils of Thales SA and made an offer to acquire the Thales Computers SA, as well French Thales Computers SA. as to French relevant Authorities The company is 100% owned by Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected Get Connected with companies and products featured in this section.

Ad Index

Products

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February 2008

Industry Insider

ANSI Upholds Reaccreditation of VITA/ VSO

VITA, the trade association dedicated to fostering American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited, open system architectures in critical embedded system applications, was notified by ANSI that the latest appeal filed by Motorola on the decision by ANSI to reaccredit the procedures of VITA/VSO has been dismissed.

Motorola originally appealed to the ANSI Executive Standards Council (ExSC) Panel, who denied the appeal and affirmed the original decision made by the ExSC to reaccredit the procedures of VITA/VSO to include ex-ante policy. A second appeal was made per the ANSI appeals process to the ANSI Appeals Board. The appeals statement and supporting documentation that was submitted by Motorola in connection with this appeal, together with the appeals material originally before the ANSI Executive Standards Council, was provided to the members of the ANSI Appeals Board via letter ballot. The letter ballot was issued in accordance with clause 11 Appeals process of the ANSI Appeals Board Operating Procedures in order for the members to determine “whether the appellant has established a prima facie case that the decision appealed from was clearly erroneous.”

The ANSI Appeals Board Panel decided, based on the record before it, that the appeals statement and record did not establish such a prima facie case.

Accordingly, the ANSI Appeals Board dismissed the appeal without an appeals hearing. This decision completes the appeals processes available at ANSI.

10

February 2008

Zigbee Smart Energy Profile for Efficient Metering and Management

ZigBee has announced that it has completed development of its ZigBee Smart Energy public application profile. ZigBee Smart Energy offers utility companies a global open standard for implementing secure, easy-to-use wireless home area networks for managing energy. The profile also offers product manufacturers access to a burgeoning green marketplace by establishing a standards-based technology for new products designed to enhance energy management and efficiency by consumers everywhere.

ZigBee Smart Energy enables wireless communication between utility companies and common household devices such as smart thermostats and appliances. It improves energy efficiency by allowing consumers to choose interoperable products from different manufacturers giving them the means to manage their energy consumption more precisely using automation and near real-time information. It also helps utility companies implement new advanced metering and demand response programs to drive greater energy management and efficiency, while responding to changing government requirements. A number of Alliance members are currently building products that will be certified by the Alliance to support ZigBee Smart Energy.

ZigBee Smart Energy offers innovative electric, gas and water utilities support for advanced metering, demand response, load control, pricing and customer messaging programs. It provides communication and control for devices such as in-home displays, programmable communicating thermostats, water heaters, lighting, smart appliances, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, plus energy service portals and energy management systems.

Over Four Billion Embedded Systems Shipped in 2006—Still Resisting Commercial RTOS

Recently published research

by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) concludes that over 4 billion embedded systems/devices were shipped worldwide in 2006. According to VDC’s “2007 Embedded Systems Market Statistics” report, significant growth in the number of embedded shipments is expected to continue over the coming years.

Furthermore, VDC estimates that embedded systems using no formal operating system (with no software on the device that is considered to be an operating system by the project team) or in-house developed operating systems as their primary operating system, represented the majority of total embedded system shipments in 2006. Through 2009, VDC expects the number of embedded devices shipping with a commercial and/or open source operating system to grow at a faster rate than shipments of devices with an in-house/proprietary operating system or with no formal operating system.

The trend toward the use of formal third-party operating systems within today’s embedded systems projects is driving this transition. However, VDC believes that migrations in operating system selection will impact total embedded unit shipments less visibly in the shorter term, as the number of products shipping in any given year will always be heavily represented by designs from years past.

Wireless IP Companies Announce Joint Marketing Agreement for WiMAX

Two producers of highly optimized, power-efficient semiconductor IP for WiMAX and emerging wireless standards will offer a joint solution combining baseband processor firmware and MAC layer plus protocol stacks as a complete wireless technology package for system-on-chip developers Coresonic AB, a provider of baseband processor technology for next-generation multimode wireless modems, has announced a joint marketing agreement with SySDSoft, Inc., a provider of embedded software for the wireless broadband market, to promote and market each other’s complementary technologies as complete packaged solutions to mobile device developers and manufacturers.

SySDSoft designs baseband and RF/analog circuits for the growing wireless broadband market, with a product portfolio covering a variety of technologies such as WiMAX, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and wireless USB. Its IP cores can also be implemented in the latest generation of mobile WiMAX IEEE 802.16-e/WiBro wave 2-compliant MAC for mobile devices. The initial focus of this collaborative effort is on producing a WiMax demonstrator, and the companies intend to add Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support to meet customer needs.

E The magazine of record for the embedded computing industry

THE 2-for-1 EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD 2007

very year RTC offers our advertisers an extra opportunity to feature their products and achievements in our Annual 2-for-1 promotion. This year we’ve decided to highlight one of these submissions to present our first ever “Two-for-One” Editor’s Choice Award.

This award goes to the company that demonstrates outstanding technical achievement as presented in their Products spotlight.

May I have the envelope please?

This year’s iPod Nano® Award goes to: Acromag for their inclusion of PMC-VLX/VSX Virtex-5 FPGA I/O and AMX-A30 HighSpeed A/D with Virtex-4 FPGA Thank you to all our advertisers for their continued support of RTC.

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www.thalescomputers.com Untitled-2 1

February8/21/07 2008

11

8:14:31 PM

Technology InContext

ATCA and RapidIO Meet Demanding Semiconductor Applications The necessity for highly available platforms supporting dense and complex processing in the semiconductor industry has led to the adoption of Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) equipment for top-end control applications.

by I an Shearer Mercury Computer Systems

d

exploration er your goal eak directly al page, the resource. chnology, and products

ATCA Breaks Out of Telecom

A

leading semiconductor company re- real-time performance. Semiconductor cently had a situation in which de- manufacturing equipment has throughmands placed on its equipment were put as a key performance criteria, so “real increasing, and the existing bus-based time” becomes more aggressive with evcomputing system was running out of ery new generation of equipment. While bandwidth and introducing unacceptable this level of speed and accuracy is defilatency. The company required a fabric- nitely at the top end of the performance based solution that was cost-effective and requirements, the approach described scalable, yet still supported an existing here applies—albeit in a smaller scale—to proprietary I/O format. Advanced Mez- less demanding systems. zanine Cards (AMCs), standard ATCA panies providing solutions now carrier blades and a RapidIO fabric met Complex Application Makes Big ration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest the demanding, low-latency control-loop Demands lication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you requirements this industrial equipment As with any multiprocessor applicaice you require for whatever type ofoftechnology, While tion, moving data around the system is as ies and productsapplication. you are searching for. these standards were not specifically designed for this market, important as the processing. The compathey are capable of meeting requirements ny’s compute platform used a common for a broad range of applications. bus structure to pass data between proThe application is basically an ex- cessors, and between processors and I/O tremely complex control loop. Rather than modules. Over recent equipment generaa simple three-term proportional-inte- tions, the amount of data to be processed gral-derivative (PID) controller, achieving and the processor clock speed increased, nanometer control accuracy requires nu- but the bus capacity remained limited. merous terms and algorithms that neces- Data movement soaked up a greater prositate using multiple processors to achieve portion of the available time for each operation and the bus became a bottleneck to achieving required performance. The Get Connected next-generation compute platform therewith companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected fore had a number of enhanced require-

End of Article

12

February 2008 Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected

ments including deterministic latency, support for proprietary I/O, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. It also needed to be on a clear technology path into the future.

Control-loop applications have hard, deterministic real-time constraints, and violating the input-to-output latency results in machine failure and unacceptable performance. The results are down time.

Achieving a low mean latency is insufficient; the peak system-level latency must also be constrained. Computing the right drive current to apply to an actuator is of little value if the current is not applied at the right time; think of hitting the brakes really hard.

There was also a need to support legacy and proprietary I/O. The old computing system was linked to other parts of the equipment by a set of proprietary interfaces. There were so many such connections that replacing them with standardsbased interfaces was unrealistic. While it was highly desirable to adopt a standard platform for the compute platform, that platform had to be capable of easily supporting custom I/O modules.

Moving to a new design platform should allow easy implementation of dif-

Technology InContext ferent options. In this instance, the overall semiconductor equipment is produced in a number of versions, with different levels of performance and various options. Also, the equipment includes a large number of controllers with varying levels of complexity. Using a platform that is scalable in terms of performance, processor count and I/O configuration supports that complex product mix.

Point solutions—one-off solutions with no roadmap—are often expedient but generally delay issues until some future date. The old bus-based processing architecture had been used for many years very successfully. Unless a similar architecture was used again, maybe just repackaged to make use of new standards, there would be significant disruption in adopting a new platform. It did not make sense to make such a change without knowing the new solution would last for some time and support adoption of new technology as it becomes available.

Finally, even in top-end applications driven by innovation and performance, cost is an important factor in selecting a compute platform. In a cyclic industry such as semiconductor equipment, managing production costs can determine a company’s ability to survive.

Why RapidIO?

A switched fabric was the obvious next step from a bus architecture providing a number of performance and usability benefits. RapidIO is the current embedded fabric of choice, being an open standard, providing high bandwidth, and being widely supported by processor and FPGA manufacturers. Most significantly, RapidIO implements point-to-point assured delivery in hardware, with the result that latency is both low and highly deterministic. The closest rival for a fabric interconnect, embedded Ethernet, has a high software overhead and poor determinism.

While deterministic low latency was imperative for the target application, RapidIO offers other features that provide important system-level benefits. Using a bus-based communication requires close coupling between software and hardware.

Moving data between I/O nodes and multiple processors over a shared bus requires a packetized TDM implementation, which means all internal processing needs to ad-

AMCs FPGA Compute Node FPGA Compute Node FPGA Compute Node FPGA Compute Node

AMCs PowerPC Node PowerPC Node PowerPC Node PowerPC Node

Backplane

4

4 Serial RapidIO Switch Fabric

AMCs

AMCs

DSP Node DSP Node

I/O Module

4

I/O Module

4

DSP Node

I/O Module Control

DSP Node

8

1 GE Switch

I/O Module

8

Chassis Management

8

Figure 1

Shmm/IPMI

8

AdvancedTCA is a telecomm standard built around switched fabrics and supports RapidIO through the PICMG 3.5 and AMC.4 standards and is conducive for many other applications including industrial control.

here to a rigid timeline to hit bus availability slots. RapidIO endpoints simply send out data packets when the data is ready, and the fabric takes care of interleaving packets, message queues, etc. This decoupling of software and hardware significantly eases software design, allowing flexibility in the application structure.

Another benefit of RapidIO is its ability to handle different levels of traffic priority. This allowed high-priority (deterministic data) and low-priority (system management) packets to share the same fabric with minimal latency impact. In fact, benchmarking activities carried out during system design showed that up to 60 Mbytes/s of low-priority traffic can be moved across critical areas of the fabric with less than 10% latency impact on critical data.

Why AdvancedTCA?

AdvancedTCA is a telecomm standard, so why use it for an industrial control application? Well, for starters, it is built around switched fabrics and supports RapidIO through the PICMG 3.5 and AMC.4 standards (Figure 1). Because

ATCA is an established standard, there are numerous manufacturers of processors, I/O modules, chassis, carriers, etc. providing a strong competitive landscape.

In addition, the AMC standards allow for fine granularity in system definition and scaling. For example, it is easier to add a single processor by plugging in an AMC rather than two-to-four processors on a full blade. So ATCA fits well for a “building-block” approach to platform implementation.

Hardware is only part of the story for a processing platform. Any respectable processor card vendor offers drivers for the supported interfaces. In this case middleware was developed to isolate the application from the underlying technology, reducing application development time and making future technology transitions easier.

ATCA also offers system-level benefits that add value. The base interface (Ethernet) provides a simple method of booting the complete system, with it being common practice to use ftp to boot from an external server. The IPMI infrastructure supports a range of configuFebruary 2008

13

Technology InContext a proprietary high-speed bus for timecritical data—the RapidIO fabric supports these multiple traffic flows in a deterministic manner.

What Next?

Figure 2

Mercury’s Ensemble2 product line includes control (PowerPC and PowerQUICC) and DSP processors, FPGA-based AMCs, standard carrier blades, a RapidIO switch blade and various sizes of ATCA chassis.

ration management and machine health monitoring capabilities that can prove extremely useful in the large and complex systems typical of semiconductor equipment. Being designed for the high-volume telecomm industry, the standard also supports attractive cost metrics, particularly as adoption accelerates.

Solution

The new compute platform is based on Mercury Computer Systems’ Ensemble2 product line, which includes control (PowerPC and PowerQUICC) and DSP processors, FPGA-based AMCs (Figure 2), standard carrier blades, a RapidIO switch blade and various sizes of ATCA chassis. By using AMC carrier blades with onboard RapidIO switching, the resulting system configuration is a compute

14

February 2008

platform that meets the customer’s deterministic low-latency requirements in a physically small, high-density package.

A custom-interface AMC translates between RapidIO and the proprietary protocol used throughout the rest of the system. This uses standard serial RapidIO endpoint IP, implemented in an FPGA, to interface to the rest of the compute platform and existing customer IP in the same FPGA to support the proprietary interface.

The system is scalable in both processing and I/O by selecting the appropriate AMCs, while the RapidIO fabric provides the necessary flexibility to enable this to be done without compromising performance. Whereas the old processing system used two buses—a standard bus for control and monitoring alongside

In any industry, value must increase over time. In a processing platform that means either reducing cost or increasing performance, or both. MicroTCA offers an obvious route for cost reduction, reducing the switching and support infrastructure costs for a RapidIO platform. While the equivalent system provides lower bandwidth (being dual star rather than mesh architecture) the target application is not bandwidth-constrained. Since fewer switch “hops” are required to traverse the system, MicroTCA actually offers lower hardware latency, giving a small benefit to this critical system characteristic.

Cost reduction is assisted by moving to multicore processors. Application developers must take care to make use of the benefits of such a processor, but in this case middleware—a hardware abstraction layer—was provided to isolate the user from the platform, easing the adoption of new technology.

While ATCA was designed for the telecom market, it is a very capable standard that is appropriate for a much broader range of applications. Switched fabrics are replacing bus-based architectures where bandwidth and/or latency are important. By having the fabric firmly embedded at the heart of the standard, ATCA is well placed for such applications. The system management capabilities provided by the IPMI infrastructure add value wherever there is more than a minimal level of complexity.

RapidIO, as a lean, low-latency fabric specifically designed for embedded applications, is gaining traction in embedded control, so it is not surprising that RapidIO and ATCA together are adopted in this space.

MicroTCA, with its lower infrastructure overhead and lower cost base, will broaden the applicability of such fabric-based control platforms to less demanding and more cost-sensitive applications.

Mercury Computer Systems Chelmsford, MA. (978) 256-1300. [www.mc.com].

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2500MB/sec 10G b 250MB/se

c 1Gb

Software Stack Conventional NIC Technology

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[Problem] You’re expecting 10Gb Ethernet to deliver a whole lot more performance to your embedded system. But what if you invest in it and get no gain at all? The performance of nearly all existing 1Gb applications are limited by the software overhead associated with the TCP/IP protocol stack. This bottleneck is in the software stack, not the network hardware.

So, simply upgrading to 10Gb pipes will not improve your system’s performance.

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XGE Silicon Stack Ethernet vs. Software-based Stack

Software Stack 10Gb

1Gb

10Gb

40 varies with protocol

250

2500

1Gb Throughput max sustained rate in MBytes/sec Host Overhead

Very High

Latency

125 μsec

Determinism typical variation Reliability

Silicon Stack

Horrible ± 200 μsec Poor when under heavy load

Very Low 12 μsec

5 μsec

Rock Solid ± 1 μsec Excellent under all load conditions, no dropped data

solutions engineering

Standards Will Fuel the Spread of Wireless Network Technologies Wireless products and technology for sensing and control applications have become a reality, and the widespread adoption of wireless technology is only a matter of time. For that to happen, product integrators require technology standards to provide product interoperability, a large body of knowledge and development sources, second sourcing and flexibility.

by Niek Van Dierdonck GreenPeak

d

exploration er your goal eak directly al page, the resource. chnology, and products

Wireless Sensors

T

he average home user has fifty light Application switches in the home; a facility manEmbedded Software ager receives a daily status update of all 10,000 lights in the large office buildNetwork Stack ing; an industrial plant operator receives Embedded Software an alarm that the mains power has failed and that the uninterruptible power supply Wireless Transceiver has commanded all heavy machinery to Hardware “Chip” switch to a safe state.

All three examples are typical sensor and actuator cases: the home switch trigFigure 1 Basic architecture of a panies providing solutions now gers the home light, the office building wireless sensor device. ration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest luminaries deliver a remote status report, lication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you thewhatever factory power supply light. Of course reliability is important ice you require for typeuninterruptible of technology, the state of the machines. too, but an occasional second pressing of ies and products(UPS) you are changes searching for.

In all three applications, devices commu- the switch to make the light turn on won’t nicate over a network. In all three applica- create a critical situation. tions, wireless communication can offer The situation is quite different in the a huge cost saving opportunity given the office building. The facility manager usuhigh installation costs of cable networks. ally guarantees a minimum service level Under the hood, however, the three to the building owner or occupant and applications are very different. In the relies on automation systems to perform home application the main drivers are maintenance tasks. Failing systems causlow cost and low power for the wireless ing a hiccup in the maintenance schedule switches and low cost for the wireless can have huge financial impact. Worse, an intruder switching off all lights of a large office building at 6 PM on a dark winter Get Connected day can cause panic and casualties: nothwith companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected ing less than a terrorist attack. So reli-

End of Article

16

February 2008 Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected

ability is essential in commercial building applications.

Because commercial applications often have hundreds of devices running on batteries that will eventually fail and need costly labor effort to replace, low power is more critical in commercial applications than in the home. Industrial automation is probably even higher up on the reliability scale, even a slight glitch in a safety application might cause fatalities. On the other hand, industrial automation is usually less cost-sensitive than home and commercial building applications.

These are only a few of the parameters that define the diversity of sensor applications. Other parameters include latency of the communication, the number of nodes in a network, the complexity it takes to install, commission and maintain a network, etc. It should come as no surprise that for such a diverse application space a “one-size-fits-all” strategy just does not work—not for the technology, nor for the wireless standards that specify how wireless technology works.

Standardization organizations have understood that scoping is required to answer the vast diversity in requirements.

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SOLUTIONS Engineering

The Wireless Transceiver chip Application

ZigBee Residential

Network Stack

ZigBee Pro Commercial

Wireless Transceiver

Figure 2

ISA-100 Wireless HART Industrial

IEEE 802.15.4

A view of the most prominent wireless sensor network stack standards.

Parameter

IEEE 802.15.4

Bluetooth

Wireless frequency

2.4GHz / 868MHz / 915MHz

2.4GHz

Data rate

20 kbps up to 250kpbs

1000 kbps

Typical average power consumption

1 micro-Ampere

5000 micro-Ampere

Network size

Up to 65536

Up to 8 nodes

Range

30-300ft (10-100m)

30-300ft (10-100m)

Table 1

The main parameters of IEEE 802.15.4 compared to Bluetooth.

Some technology providers have usually taken one or two fields of specialization in their quest to be excellent in a few key areas rather than try to do it all equally well, but not well enough for every individual application. Integrators, OEM companies and users of wireless technology are further away from the technology and generally are better aware of their own key requirements than of the key requirements of completely different applications. Therefore many people are often bewildered by the emerging number of seemingly competing standards.

Hardware, Software and Chips… Oh My!

The vital forces behind standardization are: interoperability across brands, second sourcing availability, competition between technology providers to drive prices down, compliance with global regulations and the opportunity to tap into a large body of knowledge. But there is more. Some technology components are so expensive to develop that they can only generate an economic return through very high volumes. And when volumes need to be large, the presence of a global market is paramount. Standards are an excellent

18

February 2008

vehicle to generate global awareness and to prepare for such a global market rampup. The basic architecture of a wireless sensor system consists of three layers, as depicted in Figure 1.

The lowest block in the architecture, the wireless transceiver, is required to translate digital information (the bits and bytes) into a wireless electromagnetic signal that has the right format to be broadcast by the antenna at the transmitter-side and be reconstructed at the receiver end.

In previous generations of wireless technology, you either had a transmitter for transmission only, or a receiver that was only capable of reception. Nowadays, technology has shifted to combined reception and transmission devices as it enables powerful concepts that improve reliability and performance.

A straightforward example is the acknowledgement principle: when the receiver successfully receives a message, it sends an acknowledgement to the original transmitter in order to confirm correct reception. Without this principle, the transmitter has no way of knowing whether the message ever arrived. Consequently, transmit- or receive-only technology is considered unreliable and obsolete.

Chip manufacturers need high volume sales to generate meaningful return; high volumes require global markets; and for a global market to take off, technology history has shown that the existence of a standard is essential. This was true for Wi-Fi (wireless Internet), technically termed IEEE 802.11 (a/b/g/n/…). Bluetooth chips are based on a standard defined in the IEEE 802.15.1 specification.

For sensor networks, the IEEE 802.15.4 (a/b) standard was set up in 2003. The fact that all three mentioned technologies were standardized under the wings of the same organization, the IEEE, proves that they were conceived for different purposes and not to compete with each other. Indeed, Wi-Fi was conceived as an alternative to wired Ethernet PC communication: high data rate networks with a base station at the center and PCs nearby (i.e., a star-network topology). In order to achieve the application requirements Wi-Fi consumes a fair amount of power—usually sourced from a laptop battery—and data rates degrade quickly when the distance to the base station increases.

Bluetooth was conceived with the mobile phone as the center of the universe: it connects the phone to an earpiece, to a GPS device and to a laptop. The Bluetooth data rate of 1 Mbit/s is large enough to carry voice, but is at least one order of magnitude smaller than that of Wi-Fi. In return, the power consumption is lower, most often sourced from a mobile phone battery. In general, the communication range is also smaller than that of Wi-Fi, which is perfectly compatible with the applications as the phone is usually in the vicinity of the earpiece, the laptop and the GPS device.

Sensor applications have totally different requirements. Power consumption is probably the most apparent difference: sensors often have to work for years on a coin cell battery or on energy harvested from the environment through a solar panel or a vibration harvester. The battery cannot be recharged like a laptop or a phone battery. Other sensor-specific application requirements are related to automatic network organization, reliability, communication range, the large number of nodes to be supported in a single net-

SOLUTIONS Engineering

work, etc. In return, a lower data rate is generally acceptable because most sensors generate fairly small amounts of data and not even continuously.

For wireless sensor transceivers, the dominant standard and probably only real standard is the IEEE 802.15.4 specification. The first version was ratified in 2003, with an update in 2006. Several vendors offer transceiver chips. Some of them are a minimal implementation of the standard. Others offer add-ons that are useful in some application segments, such as GreenPeak’s own GP-2000 transceiver, which has many power reducing features targeted toward coin-cell and battery-less applications.

There have been efforts to use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for sensor applications.

In those cases, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were used in a non-standard way, weaving the principles of IEEE 802.15.4 in their native implementation. Today it is widely accepted that the IEEE 802.15.4 offers the best basis for wireless sensor applications.

Table 1 compares the main parameters of IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth.

Besides the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, a number of technology suppliers have chosen to build a proprietary transceiver.

The main motivation seems to be a reduction of the complexity and thus a potential lower cost point. It remains to be seen if a proprietary solution will ever reach sufficient volumes to actually reach that theoretically lower cost point. Additionally, reducing the complexity automatically goes hand in hand with sacrificing performance and thus limiting the applicability.

work node or even a whole branch of the network. In response, the network stack needs to re-organize the communication routes through the network by establishing new links in order to provide uninterrupted connectivity to all parts of the network.

The other responsibility of the network is to ensure that messages can travel from a source node to a destination node in a reliable and efficient way. Efficiency here

means that latency requirements—that is, the travel time of a message—should be met and that bottlenecks in the routing of messages need to be avoided.

The broad application space has widely varying requirements and thus calls for flexibility in the communication technology. Hardware alone cannot offer this flexibility. The network stack comes to the rescue here, because a large part of it is generally implemented

The Network Stack

In essence the network stack has two responsibilities. First, it forms and maintains the network. An important consideration in wireless network stack design is the ability to cope with the constantly varying quality of the wireless links between nodes. For example, in a building automation application, people moving around with their mobile devices have a formidable effect on the link quality, because when a person stands in between two nodes, the link quality will reduce drastically. So the network stack needs to take into account that links can disappear at any moment, possibly isolating a netFebruary 2008

19

SOLUTIONS Engineering

Feature

ZigBee

ZigBee PRO

ISA-100

Wireless HART

Transceiver technology

IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4

Support for wireless mesh routing

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ability to cope with very large networks

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Latency determinism

No

No

Yes

Yes

Reliability determinism

No

No

Yes

Yes

Built-in security features

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Table2

Comparison of the major features of ZigBee, ZigBeePRO, ISA-100 and Wireless HART.

in software. And software, as compared to hardware, does not have as high an up-front investment cost, meaning that a software investment can live with lower volumes than hardware and still lead to a healthy return.

The consequence of these economics is that today we see several Network Stacks standardized, some of them in progress, others already completed. All the current standards build on top of the

IEEE 802.15.4 specification. In other words, these standards assume an IEEE 802.15.4 foundation and sit on top of it (Figure 2).

The Impact of the Zigbee Alliance

The ZigBee Alliance is an independent standardization organization that is driven by a large group of technology providers and OEM companies. The most

recent milestone the alliance achieved at the end of 2007 was to finalize the specification of two Network Stacks: the ZigBee Network Stack and the ZigBee PRO Network Stack.

In essence, ZigBee PRO is a superset of ZigBee, adding functionalities related to the ability to scale up the network size and to better cope with wireless interference from other technologies. From a usage point of view, the ZigBee Network Stack is very suitable for residential “home� applications, where home networks typically contain from tens to a few hundreds of devices. The ZigBee PRO features make it especially suitable for larger applications, very often in the commercial building space. The drawback of ZigBee PRO versus ZigBee is that the extra features require a larger program memory size, which automatically translates into higher cost. In the extremely cost-sensitive consumer market, every extra cost limits the likelihood of adoption. However, thanks to the ever-decreasing cost of silicon, we predict that in the short term the cost difference between ZigBee and ZigBee PRO

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SOLUTIONS Engineering

will be negligible and that most applications will adopt ZigBee PRO. Although the ZigBee Alliance does not explicitly rule out industrial applications, a number of large industrial automation companies have identified the need for extra features, which are not on ZigBee’s top priority list. The two most important “Industrial” features are deterministic latency and deterministic reliability.

Latency is the time a message needs to travel from the source to the destination. If the source is a PLC and the destination is a machine, it is easy to see why tight control over latency is important.

That is why the standards that explicitly target industrial automation exploit the IEEE 802.15.4 feature called Guaranteed Time Slots to offer latency determinism.

In different words, the IEEE 802.15.4 has a feature that allows better control over when a message will arrive. Guaranteed Time Slots are not exploited by ZigBee. The second most visible add-on in industrial automation standards is related to reliability. Reliability is related to the availability or absence of a communication path between two wireless devices.

The most important enemy of reliability is wireless interference coming from other users of the same frequency band.

The most notable interferers for IEEE 802.15.4-based devices that operate in the 2.4 GHz frequency band are Wi-Fi transceivers. Most interferers will not fully block out an IEEE 802.15.4 device, but will cause some wireless packets to get lost, regardless of the network stack operating on top of it. The industrial standards provide a mechanism that allows packet losses to become evenly spread out over time, even if the number of lost packets does not substantially decrease. The result can be called deterministic reliability.

ISA-100 and Wireless HART

ISA-100 and Wireless HART are the two driving industrial wireless automation standards. ISA-100 is the brainchild of the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA), a non-profit technical society for focusing on industrial automation. The ISA-100 is expected to deliver a standard specification in the course of 2008-2009.

Wireless HART is not a full industrial sensor protocol but an add-on to the old but very popular HART industrial (wired) bus standard for industrial automation. In essence, Wireless HART provides an alternative to the wired message transmission protocol of HART. As ISA-100 and Wireless HART are fundamentally solving the same problems, they have recently joined hands in an effort to examine whether both standards can be merged into one. In a first version they will most likely not be interoperable and will require a network bridge to interface. A follow up version might define a common language.

The advantages of the industrial standards are not totally meaningless in commercial building automation, but probably not essential to it either. At the same time the industrial standard features add substantial cost, which residential and commercial application are not likely to accept as these markets are typically much more cost-sensitive than industrial applications.

Table 2 lists some of the features of the standards discussed.

Proprietary Wireless Technology

As in all fields of technology, there are proprietary wireless sensor technologies.

We define proprietary as a technology that is dominated by a single company. Proprietary does not mean that the specification is not open, because sometimes it is. But a single company still controls the direction of the technology, effectively leading to a monopoly. Proprietary standards have often been designed around a single or limited set of applications. In practice, a proprietary technology can develop much faster than a technology standard because there is no need to reach consensus among different companies. Quite often the proprietary standard can be technically superior to standards when used within their limited set of target applications. Conversely, it is uncommon that a proprietary technology is able to address the broader space of applications that a standard addresses.

The two most notable proprietary technologies in wireless sensor communication are Zensys’ Z-Wave and Cornis’ Wavenis. Z-Wave is targeted at residen-

tial automation, as exemplified by the support of a maximum of 237 nodes. This number is sufficient for homes, but is not suitable for larger commercial installations such as hotels and office buildings.

Wavenis has generated traction in Automatic Meter Reading applications, and is currently being marketed for other applications as well.

Recent Developments

Even within the boundaries of standards, technology providers discover differentiation opportunities. As an example, GreenPeak has provided Transceiver and Network Stack technology compliant to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and with additional functionalities for ultra-low-power applications. An ultra-low-power application is an application that is able to live off a coin-cell battery or off energy harvested from the environment through a solar cell, a vibration energy harvester or any other environment energy converter.

Another evolution that is likely to appear soon in standards is low power routing (LPR). In an LPR network, battery powered devices are able to receive messages from nearby devices and forward these further down a longer communication chain. Standards offer this functionality only for mains powered devices, because a device is required to be in a continuous listening state, consuming a significant amount of power. LPR adds a time synchronization mechanism to the network, allowing devices to wake up simultaneously to initiate communication, avoiding the need to be always on.

GreenPeak Zele, Belgium. +32 52 45 87 20. [www.greenpeak.com].

February 2008

21

INDUSTRY INSIG H T

OPTIMIZING Mobile and Portable Power

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

INDUSTRY Insight

Mobile Power Management

Today’s mobile and handheld systems continue offering more features and subsystems and are demanding more sophisticated power management to extend battery life and offer convenience to the user. Modular software and microprocessor control add features and flexibility for mobile power management.

by K im Rowe RoweBots Research

P

ower management systems have always ranged in size for portable applications from the human-managed Apollo systems to cell phones and BlackBerry devices we see today. The next generation of mobile and portable devices—including portable computers, tools and robots along with cell phones, video games and even hybrid cars—is being designed with ever-increasing demands for longer operation, longer battery life, higher performance output, less heating and greater energy density.

Mobile applications are at various phases of maturity and offer a range of challenges depending upon their maturity.

Cell phones are mature and their issues are well understood. They can operate in a standby mode that has a small draw with components powered down and automatically started as required. Off-line chargers (chargers that use 230/120 AC power at 50/60 Hz) work as detachable accessories for these and other applications. Other well understood applications include: portable tools, portable video game players, medical devices and many other applications.

Newer and less understood applications are generally from the fields of service robotics, field robotics, telecommunication systems and hybrid vehicles. We’ll be looking at some of the newer areas of

energy or mobile power system management with particular attention paid to mobile robotic applications.

System Features and Size

The two key variables in the area of mobile power management systems are: system size and level of isolation. Graphing applications on the grid in Figure 1 offer instant insight into the demands of the management system and the complexity of the system.

The trends in these applications are readily apparent. All systems appearing in the left half of the figure are generally driven by primary or secondary cells (rechargeable batteries) and have some local logic to control power management—not a full communication system. Recharging is always done off-line as a secondary activity, and power management complexity is limited to powering down into a quiet mode or powering down subsystems that are an integral part of the electronics.

The systems on the right half of the figure have networks and internally distributed power control among the subsystems.

Complete subsystems are managed over the network, and subcomponents of the subsystems are managed locally. Most of these systems share a single battery source.

All systems on the top half of the figure have some type of accompanying

charging system, typically either solar, hydrocarbon based, mechanical or nuclear. Sometimes sensor arrays run with primary cells (not rechargeable) and are completely disposable devices.

All systems on the bottom half of the figure live in friendlier environments and don’t need separate fueled charging systems. They rely upon off-line charging in the case of systems with rechargeable or secondary cells and on battery replacement of primary cells.

Common Power Management Features

Additional features of these systems are software driven and are best categorized into deterministic functions or those functions which are repeatable, remote control functions, remote reporting functions, self-correcting functions, supply sharing functions, safety features and diagnostics.

Deterministic functions include the generation of a sequence of events and the recognition of events. The generation of events includes features like soft start, start sequencing of supplies and restart on error.

Recognizing events includes features like failure prediction, advanced power-down conditions, data logging and how many restarts or retry events are used before reporting errors and shutting down.

February 2008

23

INDUSTRY Insight

Harsh Self Organizing Sensors

Spacecraft

Cars

Field Robots

Small Systems

Large Systems

Video Service Toys

Cell Phones

Telecom Systems

Friendly Figure 1

Mobile systems are very diverse in their application and their operating conditions, often resulting in vastly different requirements for power management.

Remote control functions allow a supply to be remotely controlled and monitored. This includes coordinating the action of multiple supplies, setting voltage and current limits and shutdown sequencing. Remote reporting functions include reporting variations in current, voltage and temperature as well as calculated values like efficiency, power and power factor.

Self-correcting functions include temperature compensation of the voltage reference, calibrated output values, temperature-driven current limits and current-driven feedback selection (hysteresis limits). Generally they also include charging features like battery charging temperature and voltage monitoring and battery charging management.

Supply sharing features are those features that allow a supply to be shared between two pieces of electronics. This can reduce weight and components if the features never work simultaneously. This would include turning each application on and off as well as managing the power supply to feature mapping to have overall control.

Safety features that are generally included are a watchdog timer, brown-out control, low voltage detection and an oscillator fault for the control processor. Other safety features would include careful monitoring of battery temperature, voltage and current with automatic shutdown.

24

February 2008

Diagnostics are a main feature that may or may not be included depending upon the application. Big networked applications require this while smaller applications do not.

System Architectures

Today, all of these architectures look very similar with the exception of various hybrid vehicles. This basic architecture is shown in Figure 2.

The charging subsystem is either integral in the case of harsh environments, or detachable in the case of more friendly environments. Friendly environments are powered off-line and harsh environments are powered with a variety of different sources that can travel with them.

By raising the bus voltage under careful control, the charging system can reverse the flow of energy from the batteries and recharge them. This is a complex and demanding task that depends upon the type of batteries, discharge levels, cell voltages, charge current, charge voltage and a variety of other factors. For that reason, charging subsystems of this nature are always run by a microcontroller. The demanding communications requirements and sequencing also require a real-time operating system to manage complexity.

The battery subsystem is generally quite simple. In some cases, special pro-

tection must be included to avoid degassing or venting of batteries and voltage surges (regeneration for example). Large choppers are required in these cases to reduce voltage and protect the batteries against damage. Sometimes a secondary cell is included as a backup. This allows the bias supplies to be run from a secondary source and provides greater reliability through redundancy and guaranteed system control.

The power buses can be redundant or not and can offer separate buses for bias supplies or not. There is a great deal of flexibility here depending upon the application.

The communications bus or buses can use a range of protocols and wiring.

Common options include: CAN, I2C, TCP/IP, UDP/IP, asynchronous serial I/O, SPI, USB and others for larger systems.

Smaller systems use direct control of submodule supplies via the microcontroller.

Larger systems achieve a greater degree of reliability by providing distributed operation and not directly coupling all the power modules. Overall, one microcontroller is required to run one power module due to sensing and other limitations.

Multiple power modules require multiple microcontrollers—each module with one controller and each with a separate communication capability. Multiple master operation is a good idea to avoid a single point of failure.

Real-Time OS Software Architecture

In a power management system, each component needs a microcontroller and each microcontroller may or may not use a real-time operating system (RTOS) to provide the different software features, run the PID loop to control the power supply and provide communication facilities.

An RTOS has a few major advantages that make it superior for developing a power management product, particularly if you are developing multiple management systems for different applications.

The main advantages are: • modular approach, which eliminates retesting and rework • independent off-the-shelf communication servers • off-the-shelf timer support • integrated development tools • synchronization ability

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INDUSTRY Insight

Power Management System Architecture Power Buses

Application

Communication Buses

Module 1

DSP Libraries I/O Servers

DSPnano Services DSPexec

Rechargeable Battery System Module 2

Figure 3

Backup Cell

Module 3

Figure 2

Charging Subsystem

...

Charge Engine or Line

Module N

A power management system should be modular with buses for communication and power transfer among modules.

• nested interrupt capability • resource management • standards-based to eliminate training With this RTOS approach, threads can be developed to provide specific features. For example, all diagnostics could be provided in one thread and only used for those designs that have the space and need for these diagnostics. The overall architecture of DSPnano, which provides these features, is shown in Figure 3.

The other main advantage of the thread-based approach is that it supports nested interrupts without special coding and allows most of the functionality to be moved from the interrupt service routines into the threads where resources can be more easily controlled. The net result is a better response time of the system.

In such a system, the main piece of the control is done by a PID loop implemented in a thread that monitors voltage and maybe current in some applications and computes new PWM parameters. Depending on the power supply, this thread will control the configuration of the PWM outputs to drive

26

February 2008

Hardware H/W & Interrupt Management

the various transistors and/or gate drivers in the design. Different conditional compilation or completely different selectable threads can be used to provide a broad set of configurations to the power supply designer as off-the-shelf modules.

Various state machines, self-correcting features, advanced power down and soft start features could be included with this thread to provide a diverse set of features. The limitations of such a system are small, allowing complete reconfiguration by the designer to meet a broad spectrum of power supply topologies and features discussed herein.

Another selectable thread will be the I/O module. A broad set of off-the-shelf I/O is available, and by using an RTOSbased design the user could easily select between UART, SPI, TCP/IP, Ethernet, USB, CAN and I2C without changes to their application program. All could be done with minimal resource requirements and standard I/O interfaces.

Another additional and optional thread could be an LCD display. Standard high-level C calls could be used to open the device, write to the display and close

Architecture of a softwarebased power management system.

the device. Status updates could be provided. Additional features could provide touch-sensitive operation and menu systems for user interaction. A full range of communication is possible with this supply and other supplies. Startup sequencing becomes a matter of timely communication between the various supplies using one of the standard I/O servers or another mechanism that the designer chooses.

Other modular thread-based features include data logging, predictive maintenance and failure, power factor correction, and power and efficiency calculations. Of course, all related information can be easily communicated to other supplies and overall controllers in the system—one of the biggest benefits of an integrated power management system.

Additionally, diagnostics and safety features can be added both within modules and in separate threads. This allows the designer to easily configure supplies to make a range of features available easily with full line pricing. Because features are almost entirely software based, simply adding memory (depending on the feature) and changing a configuration is enough to extend the design and provide greater benefits to the customers.

Today, advanced fully digital power management systems with tiny real-time operating systems like DSPnano offer the most modular, lean product developmentbased approach to portable power system design and maintenance. Modular features eliminate testing and fit with full line supply development with software-based features rather than hardware-based features.

RoweBots Research (519) 208-0189.

Kitchener, ON, Canada. [www.rowebots.com].

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SYSTEM INTEGRATION

Integrating with Middleware

Integrating complex building blocks for reliable, high-availability network services can be a daunting and costly process. The higher up the integration scale you can start with a prevalidated platform, the sooner you can begin adding unique value and get to market.

by J im Lawrence, Enea and Sven Freudenfeld, Kontron

d

exploration er your goal eak directly al page, the resource. chnology, and products

Prevalidated Hardware and Middleware Platforms Speed System Integration

T

elecommunications applications User Applications have been growing steadily with no sign of decline. Network services, SA Forums AIS such as IP-TV, social networking and 4G presence-enabled services, continue to Standards Based COTS drive growth, setting the foundation for a System Management Building Blocks broad spectrum of content delivery platforms. For instance, as social networking SA Forum HPI begins to converge with communications, it will transition from a fun pastime to a Operating Systems Shelf Mgr valuable business tool providing functionVirtualization panies providing solutions now ality such as advanced customer relationration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest I/O App ship management (CRM) capabilities. lication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get ConnectedCMM is to put you Blades Blades Whiletypethese types of services may ice you require for whatever of technology, Intelligent Platform Management Bus (IPMB) luxuries now, they will soon ies and productsseem you arelike searching for.

-Chassis FRUsbecome an integral part of our lives both personally and professionally. This means Figure 1 Integrating the complex that the demand to deliver content and building blocks in today’s provide services will grow very rapidly, platforms requires placing heavy demands on the commusophisticated and complex nications infrastructure, while requiring standards to glue them all significant scalability along with unintogether. terrupted service availability. Competition is intensifying as network equipment manufacturers (TEMs) must keep up with providers (NEPs) and telecom equipment time-to-market demands, quality of experience (QoE) expectations and increasing complexity of the network, while focusing Get Connected on differentiating their applications. with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected Building a distributed, highly avail-

End of Article

28

February 2008 Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected

able and reliable system to deliver these services is a complex and often daunting task, particularly since back-end design is increasing in its complexity. Designing the entire system in house is no longer a realistic use of resources nor is it a cost-effective option. Instead, developers are looking to a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) approach that is driven by standards in order to accelerate and take some of the risk out of the development cycle and ultimately meet delivery schedules.

By using COTS building blocks from the hardware computing platform up to the operating system (OS), High-Availability (HA) middleware and certain protocol components, NEPs and TEMs are given the fundamental elements to create a carrier-grade platform. The benefits of a carrier-based platform with a true open architecture foundation are realized in the form of highly differentiated products that are scalable. This frees up valuable engineering resources that can then be used to design applications that add value to and reduce the time-to-market of more innovative services.

Integrating all of the complex building blocks is essential and can provide a

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SYSTEMIntegration

Applications

High Availbility Middleware

System Management HW Discovery, Resource Mgmt, Event/Alarm, Management I/F

Embedded Management Provisioning, Monitoring, Accounting, Thresholds

High Availability Framework Fault Mgmt, Checkpointing, Hot Upgrade API Change Mgmt

Core Services - OSAL, Messaging, Debug, Log, Monitor

Operating System Hardware Platform

Figure 2

Overview of high-availability middleware.

number of unique technical challenges.

As a result, straightforward integration management that has been validated and tested is rapidly becoming a necessity. The SCOPE Alliance has defined a reference architecture for a generic Carrier-Grade Base Platform (CGBP). This architecture, which includes hardware, operating system, operations and maintenance functions and tools, also specifies middleware as a fundamental component for service availability. As CGBP building blocks become commoditized, the industry cooperates in many initiatives to specify and implement an open architecture. In addition, SCOPE creates profiles for The Service Availability Forum (SA Forum), the main organization active in the middleware standardization effort.

The SCOPE Alliance has also published the ATCA profile, which provides guidance for a common platform to create carrier-grade platforms that fulfill the needs of NEPs and their customers, the service providers.

The ATCA Building Block

The advent of AdvancedTCA (ATCA), the first standardized hardware platform to meet carrier-class requirements, provides the hardware building blocks and flexibility to integrate complex high-performance systems from off-theshelf components. Processing capabilities and available bandwidth increase with multicore processors while maintaining a

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February 2008

smaller footprint and lower power performance than were achievable in past rackmount configurations. Manufacturers who take advantage of the latest multicore processors in these COTS form-factors will be able to build faster, more scalable systems without upgrading the framework or increasing floor space. Combining ATCA blades with Advanced Mezzanine processor Cards on a carrier-grade, standardbased platform allows network management to take place entirely on one ATCA slot on the ATCA switch blade, relieving the bandwidth from the fabric and maximizing the footprint of the overall system.

Delivering reliable high-performance solutions that scale with the demands of the market is quite promising with such advancements.

Selecting the appropriate hardware to support a given set of communications protocols and applications is just the beginning of the engineering workload associated with launching a new carrier-class platform. Along with the robust, highly intelligent, high-availability and reliable hardware components provided by ATCA also comes a degree of complexity in the details of virtually every facet of the system. Besides the standards-based COTS system management building blocks, there are a number of other elements that must all work together seamlessly (Figure 1).

System design engineers must also integrate the associated OS and in some instances the Board Support Package (BSP)

with the associated supporting drivers for the components on the board or system, and develop middleware to integrate the hardware with the application reliably.

The management capabilities for all the hardware, fabrics, software and system components are quite sophisticated, and experts knowledgeable in the complex standards are required in order to pull all the building blocks together into a cohesive system. Robust operating systems are necessary to maintain dependable systems in high-availability environments, allowing for continued service with an interface to the user base that allows the specifics of the hardware to remain transparent.

The Daunting Task of Integration

While the benefits of using the ATCA standard are many, it still requires a certain level of integration effort that can take from 6 to 12 months to make sure all the building blocks work seamlessly together.

In addition, integrating the hardware platform can require a great deal of support in the form of program management, functional experts, quality assurance, tools and deployment support, all of which adds up to a tremendous amount of precious personnel, time and money resources.

To begin with, integration efforts are on different levels starting from interoperability on the hardware level when using multiple sources for the system components. There are also the considerations of thermal, mechanical, fabric connectivity and IPMI interoperability. This first integration task can become quite complex.

Having all the tools to perform this task is already a significant investment not to mention the engineering time to perform that validation and integration. When integrating multi-sourced standard components, further challenges arise when it comes down to identifying which “vendor� is at fault when problems occur.

The next level of integration requires that the preferred OS is working and supported on the desired blades and might require an additional validation effort.

Validating the manageability within the system can be a major undertaking. Even by using standards-based components, the system management (middleware), HPI

SYSTEMIntegration

and shelf management all need to be validated as a cohesive management unit. Even if the components are designed based on standards or a recipe, every vendor may have a different method of implementing it. For a product to be successful, it needs to be a complete solution with hardware, middleware, OS, etc. Integrating all these elements is a year’s worth of intense work, which can be a time-consuming and costly task for a systems provider.

The following outlines an example of the cost associated with resources and lost revenue due to incremental time-to-market in a real-world network application developed in house:

From the initial procurement phase (which involves component selection, procurement and learning curve) to carrier-class integration and validation of the hardware platform, to deployment support (including debug and component upgrade), the incremental time-to-market can add up to over 700 days. The lost revenue due to this delay can add up to a loss of $1 Million for every month not in the market, which totals to an astounding cost of nearly $24

Million. Within this, the portion associated with just developing the custom middleware to meet the requirements can total up to more than $500,000. Whereas, the build and validate portion can add almost $250,000.

The Emergence of Middleware

Even given the difficult, detailed and time-consuming nature of pulling the pieces of the platform together, embedded system companies should not be discouraged from developing ATCA-based carrier-class systems. In fact, the rapid middleware ecosystem growth provides new opportunities for realizing fully integrated carrier-grade base platforms. The SCOPE Alliance and SA Forum’s specifications and guidance to TEMs is beginning to gain recognition for the portability, interoperability and increased innovation they enable. Standards-based middleware provides TEMs with off-the-shelf highavailability software to complement its carrier-grade equipment (Figure 2).

Frequently there is a lapse between the availability of the hardware and the

date that it is possible to deploy applications due to the schedule cost of the backend software development. This gap can be filled with middleware platforms that provide chassis management functions, interprocess communications and services that are scalable from deeply embedded to large, complex systems.

Partnership with a Viable Platform Integrator Is Key

TEMs can realize significant time-tomarket, reduced risk advantages by partnering with proven hardware and middleware experts that can provide integrated, validated and tested platforms.

When choosing a viable platform integration partner, developers should make sure the system is clearly defined in terms of well-defined hardware and middleware with the operating system. The complexity of the undertaking requires purposedriven integration. One must be aware of program management and risk mitigation capabilities along with a clear assessment of the amount of resources, including the

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SYSTEMIntegration

availability of functional experts. In addition, evaluate the availability and capabilities of development, test and measurement tools for quality assurance.

A solid technical agreement to fully support the integration initiatives and to resolve issues of technical incompatibility quickly is essential. In establishing the value of integration on the system, remember that time-to-market is not a trivial amount. Factors to be included are customer consulting and end-point integration and 24/7 deployment support. In order to deploy, compliance certification expertise, e.g. NEBS Level 3 certification, is required.

It is important to realize that although there are a number of middleware solutions available, not all have been prevalidated and tested to work with a specific hardware platform. Pre-integrated open modular platforms take much of the guesswork out of system operability and reliability. The availability of open system solutions and open architecture middleware platforms make it possible to integrate essential services without being a technical expert in communications.

This is especially the case when the NEP or TEM collaborates with hardware and middleware suppliers from an early stage in the design process to understand the goals, implementation and operation of the system.

As an example of such a partnership, Kontron and Enea have jointly developed an ATCA Gigabit and 10-Gigabit system pre-integrated with the Enea Element middleware platform to offer a reference platform for telecom equipment manufacturers who want to accelerate the development of content delivery systems.

Element serves as an example of a suite of middleware services that sits between the operating system and applications. It provides core services for synchronizing, instrumenting, monitoring and establishing communications between applications spread across multiple operating systems and processors. Any such suite of services should include: • Shelf Management The shelf management segment of the

32

February 2008

middleware is responsible for orchestrating the power-up sequence of all the components in the chassis, which are sensed and tracked.

• System Management Making use of the shelf management implementation, the system management software will monitor all the hardware resources as a single cohesive system. The system management software handles configuration management, administrative tasks and provisioning for all the resources.

• Interprocess Communication Services provided by standard operating systems are insufficient for complex telecommunications applications. Utility libraries, interprocess communication and synchronization are tools available as a natural extension to multiple operating systems regardless of hardware and processing environment.

• Event Logging and Application Monitoring Event logging and application monitoring services make it easy for developers to instrument their applications, greatly increasing visibility into system operation. Event logging enables application processes to log and report event and state information such as slot/service availability, diagnostics and critical network events such as alarm conditions.

• High-Availability Framework (HAF) The HAF delivers all of the services required to build a true non-stop computing platform. It provides full fault management, including monitoring, detection, recovery and reporting, for every resource in the system. It also employs active heartbeat monitoring and reactive error detection schemes to ensure the health of key hardware and software components at the system, slot and application levels.

It has become a complex and laborious undertaking to build a distributed, highly available and reliable system to deliver network services. Developers of telecommunication equipment have found the COTS approach crucial in reducing risk and accelerating time-to-market. By taking advantage of COTS building blocks that include the computing hardware up

to the operating system (OS), High-Availability (HA) middleware and components of the protocol, NEPs and TEMs are able to create a carrier-grade platform. However, integrating all these elements can take a year’s worth of intense work, which can be a daunting task for a systems provider.

An out-of-the-box integration with middleware can deliver a complete control, management and data platform.

Buying a market-tested product ensures greater operational flexibility and takes foreseeable hardware, software and application upgrades into account.

Instead of rushing to modify the middleware for an altered application in house, the equipment manufacturer can trust a pre-integrated system and COTS software tools to ensure the application integration is seamless. When it comes to deploying a new system, the bottom line is worth extra investment to work with experienced manufacturers. With collaborative system design that is implemented properly, NEPs and TEMs can realize faster time-to-market, the ability to rampup new applications quickly, reduction of resources in terms of engineering and cost, proven platforms and services, and reduction in the number of man-hours to implement middleware on hardware platforms.

Enea San Jose, CA. (408) 383-9480. [www.enea.com].

Kontron Poway, CA. (858) 677-0877. [www.kontron.com].

SYSTEM INTEGRATION

Integrating with Middleware

By enabling system-level architects to describe functionality in multiple processor systems as if it were all implemented on a single processor, CORBA allows greater architectural flexibility, especially since functionality is never locked into a particular implementation.

by J oe Jacob Objective Interface Systems

d

exploration er your goal eak directly al page, the resource. chnology, and products

No Processor Is an Island: Developing Multiple Processor Systems with the “New” CORBA

O

February 2008 Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected

CORBA

34

CORBA

End of Article

CORBA

CORBA

Waveform Control pen up the simplest consumer device—cell phone, MP3 player, etc.—and you will see a dizzying FPGA DSP GPP number of chips, each performing a speADC FPGA Functions DSP Functions GPP Functions cific function. The model that you buy DAC - Channelization - MOD - SCA OE today will be replaced in six months, by - DSP - FEC - MAC a new model that is smaller, lighter and packed with more functionality. Like a mouse on a wheel, embedded programFigure 1 CORBA provides a common communication framework between mers are constantly running to make the software components in a system, in effect abstracting the actual complex simple, with a due date of yeshardware implementation and enabling different components of a panies providing solutions now terday. system to communicate with each other—independently of how and ration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest As embedded systems evolve to suplication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is towhere put you functionality is actually implemented. In this illustration, design port an ever-greater number of functions of waveform control for a SCA-compliant Software Defined Radio is ice you require for whatever type of technology, simplified since functionality can be migrated between processor capabilities, ies and productsand you are searching for.an increasing number of components at any time in the design cycle. designers are turning to multiple processor architectures to achieve their performance, power, cost and time-to-market cessors (GPPs), digital signal processors ing systems and application-specific algogoals. Today’s embedded systems are no (DSPs) and field programmable gate array rithms for next-generation designs. longer stand-alone, single-processor ar- (FPGA) processing components.

Effectively developing the architecchitectures that can be neatly controlled Further complicating design is the ture of these new multiple processor sysby a single team using a single develop- need for overall system flexibility. Not tems—as well as the applications that span ment environment. In many cases, these only do designers need to be able to them—requires a new approach to system architectures are a heterogeneous mix of repartition functionality between process- design. They must be treated as small netsingle and multicore general-purpose pro- ing components to resolve bottlenecks works unto themselves. System architects and maximize efficiency, they also need need an efficient and reliable communimechanisms in place to enable them to cation infrastructure, commonly referred Get Connected quickly and effortlessly take advantage of to as middleware, in order to pass data with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected future innovations in processors, operat- between processing components. While

SYSTEMIntegration at first glance it may seem like a straightforward process to design and implement an efficient communication infrastructure specific to an application, doing so can actually place unnecessary and undesirable long-term constraints on a system.

Every time you repartition functionality, you will need to redesign multiple custom interfaces as well. When the time and effort needed to adjust communication interfaces manually becomes too high, the overhead involved can exceed the value in performance gained by repartitioning. Consequently, you lose the performance benefits of optimizing your system through repartitioning.

Before: Custom FPGA Bridges in a CORBA System Custom Bridge DSP

GPP

ORB

ORB

FPGA

Standardizing the Communication Framework

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard was developed to provide a common communication framework between software components in a system. By abstracting applications, hardware components and the interfaces used to communicate between them, CORBA enables different parts of a system to communicate with each other, independently of how and where functionality is actually implemented (Figure 1).

For example, consider a military radar application that needs to process a high-speed signal. From an application perspective, what matters is the resulting signal, not whether it has been processed by a DSP or FPGA or both. CORBA ensures that the appropriate signal and signal processing workload are moved as efficiently as possible to the DSP or FPGA (or both) without requiring involvement from the application or developer. This is made possible through the use of a standard interface.

As important as making sure functionality can be moved to a DSP is the ability to easily and efficiently remove from the DSP all the tasks that might interfere with its optimal performance. Thus, this same standard interface enables system architects to further break down large partitions into several smaller ones. It now becomes both possible and simple to divide an algorithm initially assigned completely to one processor to multiple different processors, e.g., GPPs, DSPs and FPGAs. This further maximizes performance, minimizes latency and reduces system cost.

Transport

Custom Bridge

Figure 2

FPGA

Custom Bridge

Custom Bridge

ADC DAC

Specialized interfaces require substantial engineering resources to design and bind your system to your partitioning choices, even as bottlenecks and other inefficiencies become apparent.

Flexibility of this magnitude is essential at the system level. System architects can then migrate logic transparently to optimize an architecture in many different ways, depending upon the application’s requirements. Voice applications, for example, may implement voice processing on a DSP with signaling handled by a GPP. Various stages of a video pipeline such as color correction or scaling can be interspersed back and forth between a DSP and an FPGA. When the cost of repartitioning is minimized, system architects can test out more partitioning and processor options to achieve the optimal system architecture.

CORBA for Multiple Processor Applications

CORBA was originally created for enterprise applications by the Object Management Group (OMG), which is currently comprised of more than 800 companies. CORBA’s value in the development of any complex architecture has been recognized for quite some time, and in 1999 Real-Time CORBA was released.

In 2006, the OMG approved CORBA for embedded applications (CORBA/e).

CORBA/e was specifically designed for real-time and embedded systems that

require a small memory footprint and predictable, deterministic execution behavior. CORBA/e also provides a flexible architecture capable of supporting distributed processing. Commercial ORBs are now available that have been built from the ground up with very small footprints and high throughputs for real-time and embedded systems.

CORBA/e is primarily for GPPs and DSPs, which means that it only provides two-thirds of the answer required for today’s multiple processor systems. Fortunately, CORBA continues to evolve to serve all three processing platforms, enabling them to communicate efficiently.

Through committed industry support, the capabilities of CORBA have been carried over to FPGAs. Even with CORBA/e, FPGAs have historically been difficult to include in the CORBA framework. Without a communication framework, designers have had to create a custom proxy or bridge interface between the GPP and accelerated functions, and the result was that partitioning of functionality quickly became fixed.

FPGA-specific CORBA implementations, however, are now available to remedy this problem. With solutions such as ORBexpress FPGA from Objective InterFebruary 2008

35

SYSTEMIntegration

After: Seamless System Integration with ORBexpress FPGA DSP

GPP

ORBexpress

ORBexpress

Transport

ORBexpress

ORBexpress

FPGA

FPGA

ADC DAC

Figure 3

Through the use of a common and well-defined communications framework such as CORBA, functionality is abstracted from its actual implementation, enabling developers to optimize for performance, latency and cost by moving specific algorithms and functions to the processing components best suited to handle them. Top-level application code remains unchanged throughout the development process as functionality migrates seamlessly between GPPs, DSPs and FPGAs.

face Systems, accelerated functions can be contained within a compact CORBA wrapper, which provides the necessary communications framework. Implementing CORBA directly in hardware provides the seamless interface between GPP and user-defined blocks necessary to support flexible partitioning of functionality. Additionally, wrappers are extremely efficient, utilizing only a small fraction of available gates while minimizing latency.

Within each development environment—GPP, DSP and FPGA—the various components that make up the CORBA framework are constructed and tuned to the specific implementation without requiring manual involvement from developers. For example, when components are co-located on the same processor (i.e., two partitions on a DSP communicating with each other), there is almost no overhead since all unnecessary ORB mechanisms can be eliminated. It is important to note that even when components are located on different processors, ORB overhead is often less than that of other communication mechanisms developers might use.

36

February 2008

Location Transparency: Optimization through Migration

In order to manage complexity and enable systems to take advantage of new innovations in silicon and software as they develop, many developers are adopting a software-based approach to design.

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is an example of how 100% of signal processing is being defined in software instead of being hardwired in ASICs. The beauty of substantially defining the system in software is that you can change the physical processing components of the system without having to modify the software. This brings greater flexibility and efficiency to the development process.

Because functionality can be migrated between processing components, assignment of functionality can be done later in the development process. In fact, even after a system has been deployed for some time, functionality can be reassigned as new advances in processors become available.

Consider the development of a complex embedded system, whether a military,

communications, financial, industrial or medical application. First, developers need to prove out the concept, typically using a GPP or workstation. While a GPP is likely not the optimal platform for many of such an application’s functions, the flexibility and rapid prototyping capabilities of the GPP’s development environment make it the fastest way to demonstrate the feasibility of a particular design approach.

In traditional development cycles, system architects find themselves forced to partition the various stages of the processing pipeline to the various processing components. In each case, a specialized interface would be created to connect pipeline stages (Figure 2). Both these interfaces and the component-specific implementation of the stage require substantial engineering resources. As the design progresses, bottlenecks and other inefficiencies will invariably arise, making it clear that other partitioning choices would be more optimal. However, because of the work already invested in this particular partitioning of functionality, it becomes more cost-prohibitive to repartition the system over time. Additionally, repartitioning increases time-to-market, threatening the timely release of a product.

Through the use of a common and well-defined communications framework such as CORBA, developers are able to more easily manage design complexity in multiple-processor embedded systems because they can abstract the functionality from its actual implementation. After creating a GPP-based proof-of-concept, system architects are now able to begin optimizing for performance or cost-reducing a system by migrating specific algorithms and functions to the processing components best suited to handle them. Because of the standard communications infrastructure enabled by CORBA, true location transparency becomes possible and application functionality can, for example, migrate to and from an FPGA at any point in the design cycle. The top-level application remains unchanged throughout the entire development process as developers address performance bottlenecks through seamless migration of functionality (Figure 3).

Portability of Functionality

Many developers make the mistake

SYSTEMIntegration of focusing on code portability rather than functional portability. Code portability means that a developer can move, for example, DSP code between processors within the same family or, with substantially more effort, between DSP architectures. The idea of code portability completely breaks down when considering moving code to an altogether different processor technology, such as from a DSP to FPGA. Yet, this is exactly the level of flexibility that developers require to effectively address processing bottlenecks.

For example, it is often the case that a processing pipeline is first proven using a GPP, re-implemented on a DSP, and then further broken down by moving some portion of the pipeline to be implemented on an FPGA. Additionally, each of these migrations can occur multiple times as developers discover that they didn’t select quite the right place to partition the pipeline.

Certainly, moving part of a pipeline from a DSP to FPGA will require significant recoding. However, repartitioning is even more difficult under these circumstances since a new interface between the new partitioning lines must be created and implemented as well. Each interface is as unique as where the break in the algorithm occurs. What ends up happening is that system architects must allocate a substantial part of their constrained engineering resources, reinventing and re-implementing these interfaces. As interfaces change, so must the software components that use them, resulting in changes potentially propagating throughout a system. As a consequence, instead of focusing effort at the application level, developers must spend precious time creating the communications infrastructure over and over again, as well as debugging it.

With CORBA/e for GPPs and DSPs and new CORBA solutions for FPGAs, developers are able to focus completely on functional portability. This allows system architects and other designers to stay focused on what the system needs to accomplish, not on the minutiae of how it will be accomplished. The use of standard interfaces between software components means that repartitioning an algorithm from one processing technology to another does not impact other partitions—an invaluable benefit. Rather than boundaries

between software and processing components representing a barrier to repartitioning—because of the additional interface development that will be required—these boundaries can reflect the optimal assignment of functions to the best-suited processing resources. This approach results in a more efficient and flexible architecture. Through CORBA, embedded systems can be deployed across platforms without modifying application-level software. This leads to a higher level of ef-

ficiency and allows the optimization of system performance, latency and cost in ways not previously possible.

Objective Interfaces Herndon, VA. (703) 295-6500. [www.ois.com].

DATA ACQUISITION SHOWCASE Featuring the latest in Data Acquisition technology 2 Gsps 10-bit ADC PMC Module 192 or 384 MB SDRAM Buffer Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA VITA-35 Interface VxWorks, Linux, Windows Drivers PCI 2.2 / PCI-X Bus Onboard DMA Engine Conduction/Convection Cooled Temperature Versions: Commercial Industrial

Delphi Engineering Group, Inc. Phone: (949) 515-1490 Fax: (949) 515-1491

E-mail: info@delphieng.com Web: www.delphieng.com

Multifunction USB and PCI Data Acquisition Products USB- and PCI-2500 series boards provide true multifunction performance with analog inputs, waveform capable analog outputs, 24 high-speed digital I/O, four counter inputs, and two timer outputs. All analog, digital, and counter/timer I/O can operate synchronously and simultaneously. From $549.

Measurement Computing Phone: (508) 946-5100 Fax: (508) 946-9500

E-mail: info@mccdaq.com Web: www.mccdaq.com

Channel Accelerator XCVR 16-bit (130 MSPS) Dual 16-bit (130 MSPS) A/D converters Dual 16-bit (130 MSPS) D/A converters Xilinx Virtex-4 LX or SX FPGA Optional 32 Mbytes of QDR SRAM Includes reference design with source code Prices start at $5,840 (LX40-11, no memory)

Red Rapids Phone: (972) 671-9570 Fax: (972) 671-9572

rtc0802_scv1.indd 1

E-mail: sales@redrapids.com Web: www.redrapids.com

AM February2/19/08 2008 11:44:03 37

FeaturedProducts XMC/PMCs with x4 sRapidIO Ports and VPX Intelligent I/O Carrier

A new VPX (VITA 46) board enables direct interfacing from a Serial RapidIO (sRIO)-based fabric to onboard devices like PMC and XMC sites, large amounts of SDRAM and the CoSine System-onChips. The MM-1200 from VMetro contains dual CoSine System-onChips. Each CoSine device is embedded in a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA. Each CoSine device contains two embedded PowerPC 405GP devices, one Primary DDR array, two PowerPC local DDR arrays and two PowerPC Flash arrays.

The PowerPC processors enable the MM-1200 to be used as an XMC/ PMC carrier and memory buffer, as well as a VITA-46-based stand-alone single board computer. In addition to making the PowerPC 405GP processors accessible, each CoSine node also has one multi-ported DDR array, a dedicated 128 Mbyte DDR array to each PowerPC processor and FPGA platform flash. The CoSine nodes interface with the two mezzanine sites on the MM1200 by either an XMC or PMC interface.

The MM-1200 can support either PMCs or XMCs. Using the PMC sites, each PCI bus can operate in 32bit or 64-bit PCI 2.3 mode at up to 66 MHz or in 64-bit PCI-X mode at up to 133 MHz. Using the XMC sites, the MM-1200 supports the Aurora protocol with four MGTs or Serial RapidIO x4. In addition to having a VME320 2eSST interface, the MM-1200 includes a complete onboard Serial RapidIO switch fabric connectivity, with four independent Serial RapidIO ports to the VITA 46 P1 MGT backplane connector per the VITA 46.3 draft standard. Aggregate memory bandwidth exceeds 3 Gbytes/s per SoC, providing a total of over 6 Gbytes/s on the MM-1200.

Each of the two embedded PowerPCs in each 2VP100 is a fully functional computer. Each PowerPC contains its own DDR array, pro-

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grammable flash and UART. The PowerPC processors also share an Ethernet connection. Processors can host device drivers, perform message passing, service interrupts, or execute floating-point operations.

Each processor includes a complete BSP with all internal SoC device drivers fully integrated so customers can download application files “out of the box.”

The MM-1200 monitors the temperatures of the CoSine devices and primary circuit board to ensure proper operation. Status updates can be received by the CoSine PowerPC processors that can then make intelligent decisions, display status to user programmable LEDs, or communicate information over its Ethernet link to remote destinations.

The MM-1200DR is a rugged, extended-temperature, air-cooled board with an operating temperature of -40° to +71°C. The MM-1200DTE is a rugged, conduction-cooled board with an operating temperature of -40° to +85°C. Both the MM-1200DR and MM-1200DTE have been designed for optimal heat dissipation and deployment in environments that undergo severe shock and vibration.

Complementing the MM-1200 is the VCX301, a 3U VPX carrier for XMC mezzanines. The XMC P15/P16 signals are routed to the backplane, which determines the overall system topology. XMCs supporting both P15 and P16 connectors can take advantage of the VCX301’s architecture to route data at up to 5 Gbytes/s. The VCX301 can also be used as a carrier for PMC modules, such as an FPGA-based I/O module that supports data flow through the P14 connector. Although PCI is not supported, the VCX301 provides power to the PMC connector and I/O is routed to the backplane.

VMetro Houston, TX. (281) 584-0728. [www.vmetro.com].

VME/VXS Board Combines PowerPC, FPGA and Multiple Gigabit Serial Interfaces

A high-end VME/VXS board employs Freescale’s MPC8641D Dual Core PowerPC AltiVec Processor and a Xilinx Virtex-4 FX Series FPGA. In addition, a fabric-transparent crossbar switch bridges a wide variety of gigabit serial resources, including the PowerPC and FPGA, two XMCs, dual VXS ports, dual Fibre Channel ports and two optical serial transceivers. Native protocols support PCI Express, Serial RapidIO, Fibre Channel and Aurora, all accommodated by the crossbar switch. Up to 4 Gbytes of fast DDR2 SDRAM simplifies data buffering and boosts real-time signal processing. The Model 4207 from Pentek is targeted at applications in high-performance digital signal processing and data-acquisition systems, The Model 4207 is equipped with either a single-core MPC8641 or a dual-core MPC8641D executing at a maximum frequency of 1.5 GHz. These very latest AltiVec Freescale PowerPC processors perform 128-bit parallel processing of multiple data elements (Single-Instruction, Multiple-Data Stream) and deliver DSP floating-point processing rates of up to 12,000 GFLOPS. The processor includes built-in gigabit fabric support with both 8x PCI Express and 4x Serial RapidIO serial data ports. Up to 2 Gbyte DDR2 SDRAM is available to the processor for program and data memory, along with a nonvolatile 128 Mbyte flash for initialization, self-test and boot code.

Processor clock options are from 1.0 to1.5 GHz. The Model 4207 includes options for an onboard Xilinx Virtex-4 FX Series FPGA, the XC4VFX60 or XC4VFX100. Two 4X RocketIO ports provide a high-speed serial path between the FPGA and the crossbar switch for connection to other parts of the board, including the processor, VXS interface and XMC sites. These ports can also be configured as four 2X paths. The FPGA can be optionally equipped with 1 or 2 Gbytes of DDR2 SDRAM along with 128 Mbyte flash.

In addition to the processing power, the fabric-transparent crossbar switch of the Model 4207 offers extraordinary high-speed connectivity.

Since the processor configures all routing paths, the switch simply passes the gigabit serial traffic from one port to another, totally independent of any particular protocol. Multiple data streams can be sent through the switch simultaneously, even if they have different protocols.

Because all high-speed interfaces on the board connect through the switch, paths can be configured to meet specific requirements. For example, XMC modules can transfer data through the switch to the onboard FPGA, to the processor, to the other XMC or to another board over the VXS connector. Similar types of connections are available for other resources, using any protocol that the connected devices support, including Serial RapidIO, PCI Express, Xilinx Aurora and InfiniBand protocols. Pricing starts at $14,725 with 10 to 12 weeks ARO. Pentek, Upper Saddle River, NJ. (201) 818-5900. [www.pentek.com].

XMC Graphics Controller Delivers OpenGL Processing at PCI Express Data Rates

Based on the Nvidia G73M graphics processor, a graphics display control card from Curtiss-Wright controls Embedded Computing, the XMC-710 XMC mezzanine module is the company’s first designed to the new advanced XMC (VITA 42.3) open standard architecture. It is designed for use in VME, VPX and CompactPCI systems. Its rugged small-form-factor XMC packaging, and advanced proprietary features, including unique “video freeze detection” capability, provide system integrators with a quickly integrated high-performance graphics display controller ideal for space-constrained deployed applications and technology refresh opportunities. The card also offers highly integrated software, including Curtiss-Wright’s Graphics Software Suite (GSS) and Seaweed System’s Seawind/GL/GN /GL/GN X/OpenGL software.

The XMC-710 graphics accelerator provides dual output, and video capture capability. The card is powered by the Nvidia G73M, supported with a 128-bit local frame buffer interface with up to 512 Mbyte DDR2 frame buffer. Complementing the performance of the Nvidia GPU are Curtiss-Wright’s proprietary video processing capabilities. These advanced features, implemented in FPGA, include Curtiss-Wright’s Video Integrity Monitoring (VIM) video freeze detection. The VIM enhances the integrity of the graphics display system to meet specialized requirements in defense and aerospace systems such as safety-critical applications. Additional video processing features supported by the XMC-710 include video capture and custom video configuration to ease and speed the support of both legacy and new state-of-the-art displays.

Other XMC-710 features include up to 512 Mbyte DDR2 SDRAM dedicated graphics memory and dual independent analog and digital video output in the form of standard non-interlaced analog, DVI (dual single link, or a single dual pixel link) and dual interlaced outputs supporting NSTC, PAL, RS-170, RS-343, STANAG 3350 (A, B & C) and custom modes. The XMC-71 also supports user-defined non-interlaced modes. Operating system support includes VxWorks 6.x, Linux and Windows XP. Higher-level software support includes Curtiss-Wright’s Graphics Software Suite (GSS). The GSS features X11/OpenGL ES 2.0 and SC 1.0 and application program interface to access the card’s value added features such as VIM and custom video modes, which are available through the onboard FPGA. Together with Seaweed Systems, Curtiss-Wright offers the latest Seawind/GL/GN X/OpenGL software optimized for the XMC-710. Pricing starts at $4,580. Both air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions, according to CWCEC ruggedization guidelines, are available.

Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Leesburg, VA. (613) 254-5112. [www.cwcembedded.com].

February 2008

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FeaturedProducts Conduction-Cooled SBC Sports Dual Quad-Core Xeons

A fifth-generation dual-processor, rugged SBC supports Intel’s ultra-fast Virtualization Technology and is powered by two Quad Core Xeon processors, operating at up to 1.6 GHz, or two Dual Core Xeon processors, operating at up to 2.33 GHz. The conduction-cooled CompactPCI CC279 Premonition from General Micro Systems with up to eight independent processors on a single-slot board, delivers four times the performance of previous in-asingle-slot, convection-cooled SBCs at only 100 watts in a conduction-cooled design.

High-end memory performance comes from Intel’s highest performance Server Class 5000 series controller chip set, which features two front side buses operating at 1333 megatransfers per second (MT/s). Each of the two 8 Gbyte, 144-bit ECC, memory banks functions independently of the other at 10.6 Gbytes per second, providing an effective memory transfer rate of 21.6 Gbytes per second.

The CC279 is suitable for applications mandating not only performance but also data integrity, such as the Future Combat Systems.

In order to achieve this level of performance it was necessary to develop a unique conduction-cooling technique to remove the heat dissipated by the 100 watts of power. GMS accomplished this through a hybrid plate design utilizing heat pipes and copper/aluminum frame. A rolled edge allows a greater transfer of heat generated by the processing engine to be dissipated through the pipes as opposed to conventionally, through the frame.

1 40Untitled-6 February 2008

Basic graphics on the single-slot board are provided by a mezzanine card on the Special Application Module (SAM-III) interface. For ultrahigh-performance Quad nVidia Video Graphics, a 4HP SAM mezzanine card can be mounted on the backside of Premonition, boosting visual productivity. With its enormous data processing performance, as well as graphics performance capabilities, the CC279 is suitable for the most demanding programs, such as in applications that process multiple data sources for UAV collision avoidance utilizing array processing or digital signal processing. Standard I/O functions include Quad GigE Ethernet ports with a TCP/IP Offloading engine, six USB-2.0, one Com port with RS232/422, 20 GPI/O lines, six SATA-2 ports with RAID support and one PATA port. An optional expansion I/O module via SAM-E can provide an additional two 2.5” SATA SSD/HDD with RAID support, and PICMG 2.9 health monitoring and reporting capabilities.

The CC279 is hot swappable with auto config System Master/Peripheral Master, supporting PICMG 2.16 and PICMG 2.9, and comprises the latest features for providing a complete system on a single board. Support for the CC279 is available under Windows Vista/XP/2000, VxWorks and Linux. Premonition is also available in a convection-cooled version, the (C279). Both the conduction-cooled and the convection-cooled CC279 are available in versions for full extended temperature -40° to +85°C, and VME and VPX versions are in development. Single-unit pricing for the Premonition starts at $8,300 and shipment is 60 days ARO. General Micro Systems, Rancho Cucamonga, CA. (909) 980-4863. [www.gms4sbc.com].

2/1/08 2:39:01 PM

industry wat c h

Advanced debugging

RTOS Event Logging Enables Real-Time Systems Analysis A system event trace tool can paint a graphical picture of the system enabling developers to get a clear picture of interrupts, context switches and other system events to find and fix bugs and optimize performance in substantially less time than required using standard debugging tools.

by John Carbone, Express Logic

L

eading-edge real-time operating systems (RTOSs) offer powerful multitasking features such as support for many thread priority levels and the ability to make rapid context changes between threads. While this makes it possible to more easily provide real-time control, these capabilities create the potential for considerable complexity in the way that threads share resources. As a result, real-time applications are often difficult to understand and even more difficult to optimize.

Real-time applications, and the RTOSs they run on, can help developers discover, analyze and correct some of the most difficult-to-find system problems. They can do this by logging records of events that occur during execution of the application and inside the RTOS as services are provided. Such logging provides the capability to clearly see the occurrence of system events such as interrupts and context switches that occur out of view of standard debugging tools. The ability to identify and study these events and pinpoint their timing in the context of the overall system’s operation enables developers to identify bugs in less time and to optimize multitasking behavior.

The Traditional Approach to Event Analysis

Real-time programmers have long understood the importance of system behavior to the functionality and performance of their applications. The conventional approach to addressing these issues is to instrument the code by leaving “bread crumbs” that will generate data on system behavior when the code reaches a certain stage such as toggling an I/O pin, using printf, setting a variable or writing a value to a file.

Inserting such responses can require a considerable amount of time, especially when you consider that the instrumentation

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Figure 1

Express Logic’s TraceX offers a graphical view of real-time system events. In this example, you can see the initialization process and early execution of the application program.

code often doesn’t work exactly as expected the first time around and has to be debugged itself. Once that part of the program is verified, the instrumentation code needs to be removed and its removal also needs to be debugged. Since much of the instrumentation process is manual, the process is time-consuming and prone to additional errors.

Besides instrumenting the code, the developer also needs to find a way to interpret the data that is generated. Due to the volume of information generated by the instrumentation code, gaining an understanding of what system events have transpired, and in what sequence, can be challenging in itself.

INDUSTRY Watch A few commercial RTOSs address these concerns by offering tools that assist in the capture and interpretation of system events. Generally, these tools create a log of events during system operation and display that log graphically on the host to give developers visibility into the behavior of their system. One weakness of many of these tools, though, is that they typically are available only as an element of an overall integrated toolset, which is often very expensive to buy and may duplicate other host development tools already in use.

Most system event analyzers also tend to be inflexible in the way they manage the buffer that stores the log of system events.

They typically write to only one specific trace buffer and the buffer cannot be turned off or back on by the application, thereby risking the loss of events of interest, or saturating the buffer with useless clutter. Most of these programs present trace events

Figure 2

Information about the circular buffers used to capture event data during execution.

graphically, on multiple lines, representing the various threads in the program, system routines such as interrupt handlers, initialization code, etc. Thus the user may have to do a considerable amount of scrolling up and down to see all of the captured events. And, since developers generally get information on events by clicking on an icon representing the event and viewing a popup window with key event information, they can only view one event at a time.

A New Approach Offers Advantages

A new approach to system and application event viewing avoids these weaknesses that are common in similar products and can offer developers better access to valuable information.

An effective approach is to provide the user with the opportunity to log desired application events using an application programming interface (API). Events are logged in the database under program control with time-stamping and active thread identification so they can be displayed later in the proper time sequence.

These application events join the system events that the RTOS already logs (Figure 1).

To make events available for sequential viewing, trace information should be stored in a circular buffer on the target system with buffer size determined by the application. A circular buffer enables the most recent “n” events to be stored at all times and to be available for inspection in the case of a system malfunction or other significant event (Figure 2). Multiple buffers enable distinct “clips” of system behavior that can be analyzed together or separately.

Event logging may be stopped and started by the application program dynamically, such as when an area of interest is encoun-

tered. This avoids cluttering the database and using up target memory when the system is performing correctly. To enable developers to hone in on specific threads, a system event analyzer should make it possible to use multiple trace buffers and to switch between them when necessary. The trace information may be uploaded to the host for analysis at any time, either when encountering a breakdown or after the application has finished running.

Once an event log is uploaded from target memory to the host, the events are displayed graphically. The display on the horizontal axis represents time. The various application threads and system routines, to which events are related, are listed along the vertical axis and the events themselves are presented in the appropriate row.

All events are presented in a summary row at the top, which provides developers with a handy way to obtain a complete picture of all system events without the vertical scrolling that’s required in many products. In all rows, events are represented by color-coded icons, located at the point of occurrence along the horizontal timeline, to the right of the relevant thread or system routine, or all combined in the summary row at the top. The horizontal axis may be expanded to show more detail about events or collapsed to show more events. When an event is selected, detailed information for that event is shown at the bottom of the display including the context, event, thread pointer, new state, stack pointer and next thread point. Information is presented not only for the current event, but also for the two events preceding and the two events following the current event. This can be very useful in reducing the number of clicks required to see details of several successive events.

Solving Priority Inversion Problems

An example of the bugs that can be solved more quickly and easily with this type of tool is the classic priority inversion problem. Priority inversions arise because RTOSs employ a priority-based preemptive scheduler that ensures the highest priority thread that is ready to run actually runs. The scheduler may preempt a lower priority task in mid-execution to meet this objective. Problems can occur when high and low priority tasks share resources, such as a memory buffer. If the lower priority task is using the shared resource when the higher priority task is ready

Figure 3

This display shows a simple priority inversion, where Thread 1 holds a resource that is needed by Thread 0, which is higher in priority. Thus, Thread 0 is delayed by a lower priority thread.

February 2008

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INDUSTRY Watch to run, the higher priority task must wait for the lower priority task to finish. If the higher priority task must meet a critical deadline, then it becomes necessary to calculate the maximum time it might have to wait for all its shared resources in determining its worst-case performance.

Priority inversions are difficult to identify and correct. Their symptom is normally poor performance, but poor performance stems from many potential causes. Just as troublesome is the possibility that the priority inversion might not be noticeable in testing, which could cause the application to be non-deterministic.

With a system trace analysis, it is possible to identify and correct priority inversions. The trace buffer clearly identifies which thread is running at any point in time. This makes it easy to go back in time and determine whether a higher level priority thread is ready to run. The next step is typically determining

Figure 4

This system snapshot shows a complex priority inversion with mutex priority inheritance. Thread 0 is still being delayed while it waits for a resource owned by a lower priority thread, Thread 1.

However, priority inheritance prevents the midpriority Thread 2 from running during the priority inversion situation.

the resource blockage causing the priority inversion. The normal process is to cycle back on the higher priority thread to identify the last point in time at which it was blocked. Clicking on this event will identify the mutex or semaphore on which the highpriority thread is blocked, and can be used to track the ownership of the resource and the lower priority event that has taken control of the semaphore.

The simple priority inversion shown in Figure 3 is identified by clicking on the “MP” event (Mutex Put) in the “Thread 1” line. “Selected Event - 2” shows us a planned priority inversion.

Thread 0 has suspended on “mutex 0,” which is owned by the lower priority “Thread 1.” This could be an error if the developer did not know that this priority inversion was possible. More likely, this is a typical case of different priority threads competing for the same resource (protected by “mutex 0”).

Figure 4 shows a complex priority inversion with mutex priority inheritance revealed by clicking on the “TR” icon (Thread Resume) in the “Thread 0” time-line. “Selected Event - 2” shows the same priority inversion problem as the previous example. In this case, the mutex is set up for priority inheritance so that when

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“Thread 0” attempts to get the mutex, “Thread 1” temporarily inherits the priority of “Thread 0.” The effect of this is that although “Thread 2” became ready during the priority inversion window (inside the “System Timer Thread at the TR icon), it does not run until after the priority inversion is cleared and “Thread 0” finishes its processing.

Improving Application Performance

While most developers will begin using such a tool in order to understand and correct problems, a potentially broader benefit can be derived from using the tool to analyze and improve system-level application performance. As a general rule, the greater the proportion of time spent in the application and the less spent on system-level tasks such as context switches, the faster the application will run. The system event analyzer makes it easy to see at a glance how much time is devoted to system activity. The developer can easily drill down on specific events for diagnostic purposes.

For example, a developer might notice that there is a large number of interrupts caused by the receipt of data packets. The simplest and most common approach is to simply add each incoming data packet to a queue. Examination of the processing timeline shown by the event analyzer might reveal that a full context save/restore and RTOS queue service are performed for each packet that is received. Knowing this, the developer could optimize the per-packet processing to perform this work only upon receipt of a packet when the processing thread is suspended. In addition, the processing thread would only be suspended after all queued packets are processed. This is an especially effective optimization, since it has the potential to eliminate three RTOS services per packet processed, and becomes more beneficial as the system is loaded. Most importantly, the per-packet overhead would be hard to visualize without the tool.

Developers also can look at how the setting of priorities affects system performance. When threads are set at a relatively high number of priority levels, there’s typically a lot of switching between threads to keep the highest priority thread that is “ready” running. Developers challenge performance by assigning priorities without thinking about the volume of context switches they are willing to tolerate. Context switches are transparent to traditional debugging tools so developers usually have no way to determine the impact of priorities.

Here, context switches are revealed and this makes it easier to understand their impact on performance. Invariably one of the first things developers notice when they begin using such a tool is the larger than expected number of context switches. They are typically surprised at the amount of time these switches consume and they then can modify their programs to use a smaller number of priorities so that context switches occur less frequently. Notably, without a tool such as this, developers would be unaware of many of the inefficiencies in their system.

Express Logic, San Diego, CA. (858) 613-6640. [ www.rtos.com].

&TECHNOLOGY

Products

Multi-Slot PCI Express-to-PCI Extension Systems

A new series of multi-slot PCI Express-to-PCI extension systems offers expandability to 13 PCI slots. The PCES-8581 series from Adlink Technology extends 5V and 3.3V PCI slots to a PCI Express-based computer via a cable connection up to 23 feet (7 meters) in length. PCI devices installed in the extension system behave and work as if they are directly installed in the host system and do not require any additional driver or software installation.

Features of the PCES-8581 series include expanding the I/O capability of measurement and automation systems beyond the limited number of onboard PCI slots common in host systems. They also provide a ruggedized extension system that can withstand high temperatures and harsh vibrations so that host systems with a PCI Express x1 interface can both be located at a safe distance from such environment and directly control remote PCI devices.

The two members of the series, the PCES-8581-13S and PCES-8581-4S (4 slots) both implement PCI Express-based control of PCI modules and consist of a PCI Express extension card installed in the host computer, a shielded cable and the extension system.

The PCI Express card uses one x1 lane and communicates with the extension system via a shielded twisted copper cable. The extension system (with a PCI extension card) then converts the PCI Express interface into a PCI bridge in a 32-bit/33 MHz configuration for the additional PCI slots. The PCES-8581-13S and PCES-8581-4S are priced at $1,499 and $1,199, respectively, with discounts in volume.

Adlink Technology, Irvine, CA. (866) 423-5465. [www.adlinktech.com].

USB Connector Provides EMI & ESD Protection

A series of USB connectors incorporates EMI or ESD filters into an industry-standard USB package. These connectors satisfy the requirements of the USB 2.0 spec, which calls for EMI and ESD protection according to industry specifications. This protection has become more of a challenge as less space is available for components and smaller IC chips are more susceptible to low-level damage. Spectrum has moved the EMI filtering or ESD protection to the USB connector allowing designers to free-up valuable PC board space for other components and provide better protection for the entire device.

Inherent in the development of more plug-and-play devices with hot-plug capability is greater risk of system exposure to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electrostatic discharge (ESD).

Spectrum connectors are drop-in replacements for unfiltered connectors making them solutions for the ongoing miniaturization of peripheral devices. Various models meet the requirements of USB 2.0 and USB On-The-Go (OTG) specifications and all are RoHS compliant. The EMI filtered USB connectors are available with either a capacitive filter for USB 1.1 or with an inductive filter for USB 2.0. The connectors have pricing ranging from $1.00 to $3.00 depending on quantities required.

Spectrum Control, Fairview, PA. (814) 474-3110. [www.spectrumcontrol.com].

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Scroll Ring Interface for Ergonomic Touch Control

Known as the SimScroll scroll ring interface, a circular switch array mimics the type of capacitive touch switch found on iPods, at a fraction of the cost. SimScroll from White Electronic Designs makes it easy to navigate large menu lists such as those found on Universal Remote Controls, MP3 players and A/V media system controls. Because it has a one-piece sealed membrane switch, it’s also ideal for medical and industrial applications.

SimScroll’s interface design uses White’s patented conductive ink technology, SimTouch, with a flexible overlay laminated to the switch circuit. A variety of overlay materials can be used to enhance its appearance for effects such as a smooth glass-like finish or a brushed metallic finish for a stainless steel look. Activation pads can be screened directly on the polycarbonate overlay or on an additional polyester layer. Ease of use, design elegance, flexibility and lower cost provide a competitive advantage over other touch-switch technologies.

The SimScroll interface is actuated with a light touch through conductive circuitry and pressure-sensitive mounting adhesive. SimTouch and SimScroll switch arrays can be integrated with flexible segmented displays to create touch panel functionality.

White Electronic Designs, Phoenix, AZ. (602) 437-1520. [www.whiteedc.com].

Code Center Helps Search, Select and Evaluate Open Source

A new tool streamlines the workflow processes around the search, selection and approval of open source and other externally produced software components. The Black Duck Code Center provides developers with access to a large and growing knowledge base containing detailed information about open source components. As components are selected by developers, Black Duck Code Center provides an enterprise-wide framework to shepherd a newly selected component through a customized, multi-stage vetting and approval process. Black Duck Code Center frees developers from the bureaucracy of policy enforcement without reducing the robustness of an organization’s critical software development policies and procedures. It supports an enterprise-wide framework for engineering, legal and other corporate decision makers to collaborate seamlessly in managing software development policies, and simultaneously provides developers with unprecedented visibility into component availability and desirability. Over time, development organizations populate a catalog of approved components, which facilitates component reuse and standardization across development organizations.

Black Duck Code Center features a Web-based GUI interface, a local database of components populated with attributes and an installation of the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, a comprehensive source of information about open source and other software components. Black Duck adds newly discovered/updated components to its KnowledgeBase regularly and provides periodic KnowledgeBase updates to subscribers.

Black Duck Code Center provides a detailed insight into known vulnerabilities of components.

Comprehensive information on software components collected from thousands of sites: • Name • Description • Versions • Type (proprietary, open source, 3rd party …)

• URL • License • Programming language • Security vulnerability data Custom fields • And more…

Black Duck Software, Waltham, MA. (781) 891-5100. [ www.blackducksoftware.com].

Embedded 802.11 b/g Networking Module Couples Security with Roaming Technology

A highly secure embedded 802.11 b/g networking module is a suitable networking solution for data-sensitive, regulatory and ITdriven applications that demand the safest and most reliable technology such as medical records, financial transactions and government data. In addition, MatchPort b/g Pro from Lantronix features SmartRoam, a breakthrough technology that provides users a higher degree of reliability and mobility when moving throughout a building, warehouse, or even across campus-wide networks. MatchPort b/g Pro’s suite of security features includes: • IEEE 802.11i-compliant radio with AES-CCMP (Advanced Encryption Standard-Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol) and TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) • Complete suite of 802.1x EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocols) including EAP-TLS (Transport Layer Security), EAP-TTLS (Tunneled Transport Layer Security), PEAP (Open standard from Cisco Systems, Microsoft and RSA Security), LEAP (Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) • End-to-end TLS/SSL 3.0 (Secure Sockets Layer) and SSH (Secure Shell) tunneling • End-to-end AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 128-bit encrypted tunneling Going beyond IEEE 802.11 standards, the MatchPort also features the SmartRoam technology, which continuously tracks the radio signal strength of access points within range. Pre-authentication and caching enable smooth and automatic transition to an access point with a stronger signal, enhancing mobile reliability while minimizing communication disruption for the user. Unlike other solutions, users experience a seamless transition, gain uninterrupted mobility and a quicker, more reliable connection to the network.

MatchPort b/g Pro handles the most computationally demanding or data-intensive applications effortlessly with a 32-bit, 159 MIPS (Dhrystone 2.1) 166 MHz processor. With 8 Mbytes of SDRAM and 8 Mbyte flash, it provides enough memory capacity for OEM customization, loading Web pages and data “store and forward” applications. It features two serial ports with 230 Kbit/ s data rate capability, seven control pins (CP/GPIO) and a wide operational temperature range of -40° to 70°C, and optionally to 85°C. An application API and software developer kit (SDK) will be available, enabling OEMs to develop and deploy custom applications meeting their specific needs.

Lantronix, Irvine, CA. (949) 450-7200. [www.lantronix.com].

February 2008

47

Products&TECHNOLOGY 1U MicroBox Offered as Integrated MicroTCA Solution

Elma Electronic has announced its 1U MicroBox is now offered as a fully integrated solution. With the smallest form-factor of any deployable MicroTCA unit, the 19” rackmount MicroBox features up to 10 modules (mid-size, single width) in a compact 1U height. This includes 6 AMCs, a Power Module (PM) and a J-TAG Switch Module (JSM) from MicroBlade, and 1 MicroTCA Carrier Hub (MCH). The redundant Star signaling and redundant cooling modules provide extra reliability. This integrated system offers high bandwidth, flexibility and monitoring in the 45 mm x 465 mm x 210 mm size. Elma can also offer the MicroBox as a stand-alone chassis in various module sizes.

Cooling is achieved in a dual redundant push/pull configuration. Thermal studies show that it dissipates 35W per module (mid-size, single width) and has eight (2 x 4) fans providing 20 CFM each at 1.5” of water. The JSM is a unique testing and diagnostics module that provides remote programming and uploads. The Power Module generates less heat, an important consideration for a densely packaged system. It features individual-channel control, monitoring and shutdown for each AMC. The hot-swap pluggable fan trays and filters are separately removable and managed. The fans also feature 100 KHz multi-phase Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) with individual speed control. Pricing is under $4,500 with basic options in low volumes.

Elma Electronic, Fremont, CA. (510) 656-3400. [www.elma.com].

Modular Mini-ITX Open Frame Panel Computer

A Mini-ITX Modular Open Frame Panel Computer, the FPM610 series from Advansus, is an Open Frame Panel Computer with a 15” color TFT display that accommodates a variety of MiniITX system options, ranging from the Intel Core2 Duo to the Celeron M 600 MHz processor. The FPM610 unit makes it easier and faster to do custom system development with flexible Mini-ITX board choices, multiple displays and audio streams, powered COM ports and one built-in power supply.

Advansus currently offers four versions of the FPM610 Open Frame Panel Computer, which incorporate an Intel 945GME, 915GME, 910GMLE or 852GM mini-ITX motherboard. All versions of the FPM610 support both LVDS and DVI dual view displays, 5.1-CH audio with an additional 5-watt audio amplifier, and one fast Gigabit Ethernet controller with an RJ-45 LAN port.

Two powered serial ports are able to support external low-power devices with 5V/12V output. One CompactFlash slot takes any type I/II media card for memory or storage requirements. The readyfor-market FPM610 shares a common ATX I/O shield, and provides customers the perfect platform for digital signage, KIOSK, POS and other multimedia demanding applications.

Based on modular design, the FPM610 series accepts most Mini-ITX motherboards with custom I/O shielding available upon request. The system has a robust stainless housing for use in harsh environments, one internal hard drive bay for 2.5” IDE HDD storage and one built-in 200-watt power supply, which reduces complex wiring. With these features; widely scalable system options, simplified cabling, and superior reliability, the FPM610 is a reliable solution with a faster time-to-market.

Advansus, Taipei, Taiwan. +886-2-8177-7089. [www.advansus.com.tw].

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Library for Matlab to C Synthesis Delivers over 300 Functions

A third-party function library enables Matlab developers to generate functionally equivalent, redistributable C code for more than 300 Matlab equivalent functions with redistributable source, including a wide variety of toolbox functions. The library, developed

by Catalytic, now lets algorithm developers generate equivalent C models from Matlab code that take advantage of higher-level Matlab functions, a formerly manual effort.

Using Matlab functions offers algorithm developers significant productivity improvement, but when it comes to handing off the algorithm for incorporation in products or prototypes, they are faced with a hurdle. Since Matlab functions are delivered in M code or compiled form, a manual translation step is required to replicate the equivalent functionality in C code. Depending on the complexity of the function used, the translation could add anywhere from one to six staff weeks of effort per function. With both automatic and userdirected function substitution, Catalytic MCS enables easy use of Catalytic functions without source code modifications. With the Catalytic Function Library, developers now have a lowrisk path from Matlab functions to functionally equivalent, redistributable C code. Pricing for the library is subscription-based from $5,000 per year including quarterly updates.

Catalytic, Palo Alto, CA. (650) 846-2555. [www.catalytic.com].

Quad GbE iSCSI Solution Delivers HighPerformance IP Storage

A new 3U 16-drive Quad GbE iSCSI enterprise-grade independent RAID storage system includes snapshot, N-way Mirror, RAID-6 data protection, automatic background data regeneration, dynamic online volume expansion and MultiPath I/O support for Windows workstations and servers. The UltraStor RS16 IP-4 from Enhance Technology has a built-in 64-bit RAID controller for mission-critical applications that demand nothing short of superior performance and reliability.

The UltraStor RS16 IP-4, capable of supporting up to sixteen 1Terabyte SATA II 3 Gbit/s HDDs and powered by a 64-bit RAID engine with up to 1 Gbyte cache, maximizes disk performance and data transfer throughput with its quad GbE iSCSI ports. The built-in Web GUI RAID management system provides users the ability to monitor and control their systems from remote locations through a Web browser and it offers a “snapshot” feature, which takes an “image” of the logical volume at a particular point in time allowing consistent backup of data in minutes rather than hours without system downtime resulting in an increase of department’s productivity.

For added stability and reliability, UltraStor RS16 IP-4 is equipped with hot-swappable 460W redundant power supply and cooling modules, which enable system maintenance without interruption of service. An LCD control panel facilitates the setup process and lets users reconfigure the system as storage needs change over time. The UltraStor RS Series Enterprise IntelliRAID now supports Microsoft Multi-path I/O (MPIO), which integrates tightly with the Microsoft Windows family of products and architectures.

Enhance Technology, Santa Fe Springs, CA. (562) 777-3488. [www.enhance-tech.com].

Modules Support MOST Bus on PXI and USB Basis

New Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) automotive communication modules for ECUs in PXI and USB form-factors are available with full compliance to the current MOST specification. The new modules are the PXI card 3060 and a USB stand-alone controller named basicMOST 3060 from Goepel Electronic.

The PXI 3060 and basicMOST 3060 were designed for communication applications in general test and measurement technologies, in particular for vehicle control units. Based on the new MOST IC INIC OS81050, the modules are configurable as Master and Slave. The new controllers guarantee sending/receiving on the Control Channel and Packet Channel as well as the read-out of all data (monitoring) on the MOST bus. In addition to several specific functions, onboard diagnostic plays an important part. Furthermore, the controller is able to send/receive application protocols, data packages and control messages. Trigger inputs and outputs are provided by means of the front connector. Additionally, PXI 3060 and basicMOST 3060 have analog inputs and outputs.

Goepel Electronic, Jena, Germany. +49 3641-6896-739. [www.goepel.com].

PC/104-Plus 8-Port Stackable MAC Switch

An 8-port MAC switch is a stackable PC/104-Plus card that combines a 100BaseT Ethernet MAC with a 9-port switch. The 4I71 from Mesa Electronics makes it easy to connect multiple embedded system cards without the awkward power or mechanical problems with consumer-type Ethernet switches. The eight Ethernet ports support auto negotiation allowing connections with half and full duplex, 10 and 100 BaseT devices plus auto MDX, eliminating the need for crossover cables.

The Ethernet MAC is a Micrel 8842P. The 8842P has advanced features such as hardware TCP checksum calculation for optimum MAC performance, and has drivers available for most operating systems. The switch has sufficient bandwidth to support full duplex wire-speed connections on all ports.

Price for the 4I71 is $147 in 100s.

Mesa Electronics, Richmond, CA. 510.223.927.2 [www.mesanet.com].

February 2008

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Products&TECHNOLOGY “Anything I/O” for the PCI Bus PCIe Switching Solutions Optimized for Communications Systems

A new family of PCIe switching solutions is specifically tailored for demanding communications applications. Comprised of three 16-port devices, the family from Integrated Device Technology (IDT) offers lane-count options of 16, 22 and 34 PCIe lanes.

The 16-lane, 16-port 89HPES16H16 offers economical, highport-count connectivity for control plane traffic between management processors, ASICs, FPGAs and I/O peripherals. The 22-lane, 16-port 89HPES22H16 and 34-lane, 16-port 89HPES34H16 offer flexible x8, x4 and x1 port configurations to support a mix of data and control plane traffic. Moreover, the large port widths enable efficient, high-performance cascading connectivity for switching complexes with more than 16 ports, and provide for redundancy and failover mechanisms. The new devices feature redundant upstream ports for multi-root support and failover, support for high quality of service with two virtual channels, and deterministic latency at full wire speed throughput, ensuring predictable performance for critical system control and data plane traffic.

Each of the IDT PCIe switching solutions has a dedicated evaluation and development kit for device testing and analysis, and system emulation. Each kit consists of a hardware evaluation board with representative upstream and downstream connectivity, and an IDT-developed, GUI-based software environment that enables the designer to tune system and device configurations to meet system requirements. Moreover, to ensure that each OEM system design is optimized for production and meets its time-to-market objectives, IDT provides customers with extensive, collaborative technical support, including system modeling and signal integrity analyses, and schematic and layout review services. Pricing in OEM quantities is $43 for the 89HPES16H16, $59 for the 89HPES22H16 and $88 for the 89HPES34H16 in 10,000 unit quantities.

Integrated Device Technology, San Jose, CA. (408) 284.8200. [www.IDT.com.].

3U cPCI SBC Hosts Core 2 Duo and PMC/XMC

CompactPCI, particularly in its 3U flavor, is rapidly filling more embedded application slots. For its latest 3U cPCI offering, Concurrent Technologies has introduced their TP 442/34x. Using the latest mobile processors from the Intel embedded roadmap, the 1.5 GHz or the 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, the board is suitable for lowpower data-intensive processing applications whereby the processor’s dual cores can access up to 2 Gbytes DDR2-667 SDRAM. This versatile 3U SBC supports a variety of peripheral I/O ports, an optional PMC/XMC module and can operate in a system slot, peripheral slot or as a blade.

In addition to the commercial-grade version, two industrial-grade options are also available for operating at temperatures over -40° to +85°C or -25° to +70°C. The Intel 945GME GMCH graphics/memory controller and Intel ICH7-R I/O controller are used to complement the processor to achieve a low-power yet high-performance core design. Using two slots, the TP 442/34x supports a 66 MHz PMC (with front/rear I/O) or XMC site (via a x4 PCI Express port); alternatively there is an option to install an onboard 2.5-inch SATA300 hard disk drive, or for harsher environments, a 2.5-inch solid-state SATA flash drive.

Concurrent Technologies, Woburn, MA. (781) 933-5900. [www.gocct.com].

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The MESA 5I22 is a general-purpose programmable industrial I/O card for the PCI bus. The 5I22 uses a 1M or 1.5M gate Xilinx FPGA for all logic, so it is truly an “Anything I/O” card. The FPGA configuration is downloadable from the PCI bus side, allowing creation of almost any kind of specialized I/O function. The 5I22 uses four 5-pin connectors with I/O module rack-compatible pin-outs and interleaved grounds. Each connector provides 24 I/O bits for a total of 96 programmable I/O bits. All I/O bits are 5V tolerant and can sink 12 mA. Pull-up resistors are provided for all pins so that they may be connected directly to opto-isolators, contacts, etc. Bus master and DMA capability allow fast PCI transfer rates.

A 48 MHz crystal oscillator provides a reference clock, which can be multiplied by the FPGAs DLLs for higher clock speeds. Several pre-made functions are provided, including a 16 axis host-based servo motor controller, a 32 channel quadrature counter, many versions of the SoftDMC motion controller including 4 and 8 axis versions for step motors, brush-type servo motors and BLDC servo motors, a simple 96-bit parallel I/O port, and a 16 channel, 32-bit timer counter card capable of running at 100 MHz. VHDL source is provided for all functions. Six-layer circuit card structure is used to minimize radiated EMI and provide optimum ground and power integrity. Price of the 1M 5I22 is $219 in 100s; the 1.5M 5I22 is $249 in 100s.

Mesa Electronics, Richmond, CA (510) 223.927. [www.mesanet.com].

Products&TECHNOLOGY Rugged Fibre Channel Raid Array with Four 4 Gbit Fibre Channel Ports

A rugged, high-performance 4 Gbit Fibre Channel RAID array features a 12 hard disk drive array housed in a rugged 3U (5.25”) panel height enclosure providing 4 Gbit/s FC host interfaces to high-performance SAS and/or high-capacity SATA II HDDs. The RPC12 from Phoenix International is compliant with military and industrial specifications such as MIL-STD-901D, MIL-STD810F and NEBS Level 3. The design of the RPC12’s rugged, cableless, passive midplane-based, high-density 3U chassis provides an increased environmental operational envelope (-20° to +60°C, 45,000 ft altitude with sealed HDDs), redundant, hot-swap components and massive storage capacity, while assuring the highest level of data availability.

The major components and features of the Phoenix RPC12 Fibre Channel RAID Storage System include the 3U Ruggedized Dual Port Fibre Channel RAID System with single active (dual active, failover/failback option) controller. There are two 4 Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports and battery-free cache backup. The unit features enclosed and electrically isolated hot-swap drive canisters with an operational altitude to 45,000 ft and an operational temperature range of -20° to 60°C. Cool operation involves a maximum 10°F temperature rise. The RPC12 supports Windows, Linux and Unix (Cluster Certified) as well as including management GUI and failover software.

Phoenix International, Orange, CA. (800) 203-4800. [www.phenixint.com].

6U CompactPCI 24port Gigabit Ethernet Switches

Two new 24-port Layer 2 Gigabit Ethernet Switches from GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms feature Layer 2 switching at wire speed. The 6U Neternity CP982RC and CP980RCC offer high performance and reliability, PICMG 2.16 compliance, flexible port routing options and OpenWare Lite management (CP982RC).

While the CP980RC is designed specifically to fulfill the requirements of customers looking for high-performance, high-reliability switching solutions at low cost, the CP982RC is targeted at applications that are not presently well served by vendors—the market for high-performance, high-reliability switches that feature some degree of management without the high cost of full management. Availability of OpenWare Lite on the CP982RC provides customers with the level of switch management they require but at a cost commensurate with its reduced level of functionality.

The NETernity CP982RC, which has an onboard management processor, is characterized by its support of GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms’ OpenWare Lite Switch Management Environment, which is available exclusively on selected Neternity configuration-managed Layer 2 Ethernet switches.

Configuration and monitoring functions are accessible from a serial console or via a network. Supported access methods include Telnet, SSH and SNMP. OpenWare Lite is easy to deploy; features Linux-based software allowing faster implementation and easy updates to firmware, using a familiar Linux command line interface; and remote Telnet user interface support, allowing users to select how they interact with the switch. OpenWare Lite is also portable across switch fabrics and processor environments.

Front ports on the CP982RC can be 10/100/1000BaseT, 1000BaseLX or 1000BaseSX, while rear I/O ports are 10/100/1000BaseT. The CP980RC provides 10/100/1000BaseT support for both front and rear (copper) ports. On both the CP982RC and CP980RC, 24 (copper) ports are routed to the rear or, alternatively, 22 ports can be routed to the rear and two ports to the front. High-availability hot swap is supported on both switches, and conformal coating is optionally available.

Free Trial Tool Set for System Development on Xilinx Spartan-3 Kits

A new concept in development platforms provides the tools needed for embedded system development, including an RTOS, hardware reference designs and the tools that automatically integrate them for implementation on FPGAs. The UnifiedLogic platform from Eridon automatically customizes and configures the UnifiedLogic RTOS and integrates peripherals around an FPGA for both prototype and production hardware. The UnifiedLogic Development Platform supports Eridon’s own “snap-together” prototyping boards as well as third-party development boards, and is fully extensible. Software developers can immediately start creating application code while hardware engineers begin work on the product in its final production form. In this way, UnifiedLogic dramatically reduces time-to-market for embedded systems.

A free trial version of the UnifiedLogic Development Platform can be downloaded from http://www.eridon.com/downloads.aspx and is ready to go for Xilinx Spartan-3 Generation Starter Kits with many examples of using their peripherals. It includes the software-centric UnifiedLogic IDE, the UnifiedLogic RTOS and extensive documentation and demonstration code for the Spartan-3 Generation Starter Kit Boards. Immediately after installing the UnifiedLogic Development Platform, an embedded software developer with no FPGA expertise can configure peripherals and begin writing code for a Spartan-3 Generation Starter Kit Board.

Eridon, Wayzata, MN. (952) 474-5110. [www.eridon.com].

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, Charlottesville, VA. [www.gefanuc.com].

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Products&TECHNOLOGY VMEbus Gigabit Ethernet Switches Offer Management and IPv6

Two new Gigabit Ethernet switches from GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms offer full VPv6 support, in a single slot solution. The Neternity GBX24 is a fully rugged 6U VME 24-port Gigabit Ethernet fully managed Layer 2/3 switch, while the NETernity VXS24 provides 24-port Gigabit Ethernet functionality for VXS (VITA 41.3) environments and also offers a fully managed Layer 3 capability. Both feature full support for IPv6 and both occupy only a single chassis slot. Management of the two switches is implemented using Fastpath, providing the military industry standard for performance, ease of use and compatibility across switches.

The rugged GBX24, which is designed to meet the requirements of network switching in harsh military/aerospace environments (it is available in both air- and conduction-cooled formats), provides 24 ports to rear connectors, and four ports of optical SX or LX connectivity to the front panel. It features a non-blocking shared memory architecture, providing 48 Gbit/s wire speed performance. An unmanaged version is also available.

The VXS24 provides 22 ports of 1000BaseCX Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to the rear panel, with two ports of optional 1000BaseT available at the front panel. Like the GBX24, it is designed for deployment in demanding switching applications: it is available either in a standard air-cooled format, or rugged aircooled for increased temperature and shock resistance. It features a non-blocking shared memory architecture, providing 88 Gbit/s wire speed performance.

The GBX24 provides optional optical expansion through a mix of onboard optics and a separate Optical Expansion Board. All 24 ports can be converted to optical outputs to give 24 ports of Gigabit, either 1000 BaseSX or 1000 BaseLX. Onboard built-in test (BIT) ensures the GBX24 can be easily linked with other GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms boards to provide integrated system-level health monitoring and diagnostics.

An optional mezzanine capability for the VXS24 allows for 10 Gigabit uplink expansion, transitioning from XAUI on the switch packet processor to the appropriate 10G standard at the front panel.

The VXS24 can be expanded to a 48-port solution by connecting two VXS24s together via the 10 Gigabit ports.

Both switches feature network management capabilities based on Fastpath software that include VLANs, link aggregation, spanning tree, IPv4, IPv6, IGMP, traffic policing, Quality of Service (QoS), guaranteed bandwidth and SNMP. Configuration of the switches is via a comprehensive and intuitive Web interface, command line interface or SNMP. GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, Charlottesville, VA. [www.gefanuc.com].

L3 Gigabit Ethernet VME Switches for New Embedded Applications Demands

A line of 6U VME L3 fully managed Gigabit Ethernet switches for embedded applications, the ComEth4070a series from Interface Concept, uses the latest-generation Gigabit switch engine and PHY transceiver.

It combines a layer 2+ switch and a full layer 3 router in a single board with optimized power consumption. The ComEth4070a supports full-wirespeed L2 bridging and IP routing with L2-L4 Access List for classification, filtering and prioritization. The queue priority of eight levels is combined with a QoS policy to make it easier to tune jitter in critical applications.

The ComEth4070a provides 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports for a capacity of 37 Mpacket/s. Twenty Gigabit Ethernet ports are routed on the P0 & P2 rear connectors; the four remaining Gigabit Ethernet channels are available on the front or via the P2. The front option can provide four 1000BT (RJ45) ports or optionally 1000SX/LX fibre channels. The Gigabit transceivers automatically select the media with activity.

ComEth4070a switches are fully managed and can easily be monitored from a browser, a remote application, a CLI or SNMP. The Switchware software provides Layer 3 functions, allowing static and dynamic protocols (RIP, OSPF), IP routing, proxy-ARP and DHCP-relay. The IP protocols are carried out by the processor and the forwarding is carried out by a fullwire-speed L3 engine router. IC brings solutions to systems deployed in a wide range of environmental applications by offering products in standard, extended temperature, rugged and conduction-cooled grades.

Interface Concept, Briec de l´Odet France. +33 (0)298 573 030. [www.interfaceconcept.com].

Fixed-Mount Data Matrix Verifiers for DPM and Printed Codes

Code quality is critical to achieving the read rates required for successful part traceability, and the solution is a machine vision application for verification.

Cognex has introduced its DataMan 100V verifiers, which check the quality of data matrix codes to ensure only well-marked parts enter the manufacturing and supply chains.

A growing number of companies across the automotive, aerospace, packaging, electronics, healthcare and defense industries need verification to comply with contracts that require marks meet a certain level of quality. Others use verification for process control at the marking station to ensure the highest possible read rates and minimize scrap and downtime in their manufacturing process.

The DataMan 100V measures label and direct part mark quality to all industry standards, including the Association for Automated Identification and Mobility (AIM) Direct Part Mark (DPM) Quality Guideline, which ensures consistent results across different verification platforms, manufacturing environments and industries as well as ISO15415 and AS9132. The DataMan 100V is available now for easy integration into marking, labeling or other types of equipment, or as a complete turnkey solution for contract compliance applications.

Cognex, Natick, MA. (877) 264-6391. [www.cognex.com].

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Products&TECHNOLOGY 125 MHz 1 to 16 Channel Digital Bit Stream PCIe Card

A new PCI Express digital bit stream card comes with 16 channels that can all be set to either input or output with a maximum clock rate of 125 MHz. With the UF2e-7005 from Strategic Test, it is possible to use only 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 channels and use all of the available card memory. Also, when using fewer channels, it is possible to stream the data to or from a PC at higher rates than usual, allowing much longer signals to be recorded or generated. The UF2e-7005 is equipped with 64 Mbyte memory as standard, but can be expanded to 4 Gbytes. This enables signals to be recorded or generated for periods of up to 16 seconds on 16 channels at 125 MHz, and up to 262 seconds when using just one channel.

For many applications, it will not be necessary to purchase additional memory as the signal data can be streamed to or from the host PC. As the PCI Express x1 bus has a maximum continuous transfer rate of 120 Mbytes/s this means 8 bits or less can be streamed at just less than the maximum clock rate, while 4, 2 or 1 channels can be streamed at the maximum rate. Due to the serial bus nature of PCIe, every card can operate at this rate, unlike the 66 MHz/33 MHz PCI bus where the bandwidth is shared between multiple cards or attached motherboard devices.

Strategic Test offers a selection of software development kits including those for Windows Vista and XP64, XP, 2000, NT and 98, Linux drivers for RedHat, Suse, Fedora and Debian as well as for Matlab, LabView, Agilent-VEE, LabWindows/CVI and DASYLab. Prices start at $3,790.

3U CompactPCI Processor Blade with AMD Geode LX 800 @ 0.9W

Specifically designed to operate at a very low power consumption of less than 10 watts at full loading, the new cPCI-3600 series from Adlink Technology is based on the latest AMD Geode LX 800 @ 0.9W processor and AMD Geode CS5536 companion device to offer an optimal power/performance ratio for military, automation and transportation applications.

With its optional soldered memory and CompactFlash slot, the cPCI-3600 series allows for integration in rugged applications where high vibration and adverse environments are common. The cPCI-3600 series also offers two 10/100 Ethernet ports and an onboard 2.5” hard drive for versatile automation and transportation applications that require reliable network connectivity and efficient remote management.

Strategic Test, Woburn, MA. [www.strategic-test.com/news].

Fanless & Wireless Nano-ITX Bare-Bone System

A very small wireless Nano-ITX bare-bone system is designed for space-limited and frequent network access applications. The NTC100-LX800 from Advansus accommodates one AMD Geode LX800 @ 0.9W on a Nano-ITX motherboard and is capable of running high-quality multimedia streams up to a 500 MHz clock rate. The compact system measures 170 mm x 155 mm x 42 mm, which is smaller than a Mini-ITX form-factor.

The NTC100-LX800 is built with an ultra-low power AMD LX800 processor and CS5536 Companion Chip that dissipate a total of 2.5 watts TDP (thermal design power). The NTC100 series provides a fanless operation with one 12V DC power connector, one optional antenna via Mini-PCI slot, along with other VGA, Audio and LAN connectors. This highly reliable bare-bone system provides an ideal solution for IP-STB, thin client, LCD wall displays and ultra-mobile applications.

The NTC100 series comes with a 12V DC adapter, which provides a direct power connection. The black-coated system also provides an easy operation interface equipped with a power switch, two USB ports and two LED indicators for power and HDD status on the front panel. All these features make the NTC100 series easy to set up and use.

Advansus Taipei, Taiwan. +886-2-8177-7089. [www.advansus.com.tw].

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Designed in a dual-slot form-factor, the cPCI-3600 series offers memory configuration options of 256 Mbyte DDR 400 MHz memory (soldered) and one SODIMM socket that supports up to 1 Gbyte of RAM. The cPCI-3600 also provides two 10/100 Ethernet ports, an onboard 2.5” IDE HDD port, one CompactFlash socket, two USB 2.0 ports, two serial ports, one parallel port (SPP/ECP/EPP), one PS/2 keyboard/mouse interface and an AC’97 audio interface. The cPCI-3600 also supports analog display resolutions up to 1920 x 1440 32-bit at 85 Hz. The cPCI-3600 series is a revision controlled product that guarantees long production life support and is RoHS compliant. Pricing starts at $725 with volume discounts available.

Adlink Technology, Irvine, CA. (866) 423-5465. [www.adlinktech.com].

Mass Storage Modules for VMEbus and CompactPCI® 3U CompactPCI Embedded Blade PC Series Includes Rugged ConductionCooled Version

A Series of 3U CompactPCI blade SBCs is based on a highperformance and long-term supply processing chipset from the Intel Embedded Architecture.

The ITC-320 series from Thales features three types of top-performance single and dual-core Intel processors and four types of environmental builds, including a rugged conduction-cooled version. Equipped with the latest dual-core 1.5 GHz Intel Core2 Duo LV processor, the ITC-320 is able to meet high demand signal and data processing applications. Using the 1.2 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, the ITC-320 product is the best trade-off between computing performance and low power consumption. The ITC-320 version supports the 1.0 GHz Celeron M processor and is an excellent choice when power dissipation is a critical issue.

The ITC-320 series features all the high-performance I/Os that are available on brand new laptop PCs such as an UXGA graphics controller on PCI Express, two Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces configurable by software either on the front RJ-45 connectors, or on the rear J2 connector, quad SATA 150 ports and quad USB 2.0 ports. An onboard USB connector is able to support a standard USB flash disk module within the 4HP form-factor. The onboard SATA 150 connector extends the storage capacity of the SBC with the use of a 2.5’’ device in a larger 8HP form-factor. Furthermore, the ITC-320 can easily run high-demanding applications with its high-performance PCI-compatible PCI Express configurable either as x4 or quad x1 links.

The ITC-320 series runs the 2.6 Linux kernel and features an extensible firmware interface (EFI) BIOS/Firmware, which is able to boot QNX, VxWorks, LynxOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The ITC-320 series will be available during the first quarter of 2008 and will start at $2,600 in small volume, subject to specifications.

PMC CompactFlash Module Two Type I/ Type II CF Sockets

See the full line of Mass Storage Products at

www.RedRockTech.com

or call Toll-Free: 800-808-7837 Red Rock Technologies, Inc. 480-483-3777

edrock_04.indd 1

2/2/07 1:21:52 PM

Thales, Edison, NJ. (732) 494-1010. [www.thalescomputers.com].

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Products&TECHNOLOGY 24 VDC UPS Features DIN Rail Mounting

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is vital in a mission-critical system. To ensure industrial end users maximum uptime and total protection from unexpected DC power disruptions, Sola/Hevi-Duty has introduced the SDU DIN Rail 24V DC UPS. Available in 10 and 20A designs with a choice of two battery modules, the SDU UPS safely mounts on a DIN rail in a control panel, or can be integrated into an enclosure or machine.

Its compact modular design offers a wide operational temperature range (0°-50°C) to ensure reliable and economical power protection to 24V devices on the factory floor. It delivers the ride-through needed to allow sensitive equipment to safely shut down during extended power failure, preventing costly data losses, mission interruptions and equipment damage.

Other features include a rugged, industrial-grade steel enclosure with strong metal DIN Rail mounting connectors, batteries back-up expansion capabilities, LED indicators, alarms and self-diagnostic capabilities, and an optional USB port. The Sola/Hevi-Duty SDU DC UPS is expected to ship early this month. List pricing starts at $219.45.

Low-Cost “Anything” I/O FPGA Card

A low-cost, general-purpose programmable I/O card connects to the host computer via USB or PC parallel port. The 7I43 from Mesa Electronics uses a 200K or 400K gate Xilinx Spartan3 FPGA for all logic, so it can credibly be called an “anything” I/O card.

The FPGA can be configured by downloading from the USB or Parallel port bus side, and also has local configuration storage available on an on-card EEPROM. Efficient switching regulators are used for FPGA core and 3.3V power, allowing the 7I43 to be USB bus powered. The 7I43 can also be powered by an external 5V source.

Sola/Hevi-Duty, Rosemont, IL. (800) 377-4384. [www.solaheviduty.com].

Passive Tap Module Uses USB Port to Simplify RS232 Troubleshooting

A passive tap module using a USB port provides a low-cost, highperformance RS-232 data monitoring and logging solution in a convenient lightweight package. The EZ-Tap from Stratus Engineering provides an easy-to-use inline passive RS-232 connection in a standard DB9 connector pin-out with a digital camera style “mini-B” USB connector to allow efficient USB data extraction from an MS-Windows-based Host PC. The EZ-View companion host software allows the user to display time-tagged RS-232 communication transactions in real-time on the host PC via a scrolling window-style display. EZ-View supports various display formats as well as data save and recall for off-line analysis.

Each EZ-Tap comes complete with a passive breakout adapter, 6-foot USB cable and Stratus Engineering’s user-friendly EZ-View data-monitoring software. The EZTap data-monitoring package supports standard and non-standard baud rates as high as 250 Kbits, and includes a 30-day Money-Back guarantee. Single unit pricing is $139.95 + S&H. Stratus Engineering, San Diego, CA. (858) 663-1841. [www.stratusengineering.com].

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February 2008

The 7I43 has 48 I/O bits available on two 50-pin connectors. Both connectors use I/O module rack-compatible pinouts. All I/O bits are 5V tolerant. The I/O connectors are compatible with our 7 series daughter cards for isolated I/O, motion control, RS-422 interface and other applications. Configurations are provided for simple GPIO, Smart Motion control (SoftDMC), host-based motion control (HostMot2), buffered step & direction generation and a waveform generator. Quantity 100 price of the 7I43 is $59 (200K version) or $67 (400K version).

Mesa Electronics, Richmond, CA. (510) 223-9272. [www.mesanet.com].

Module Offers Increased Memory Support for Rabbit-Based Solutions

A new series of modules for development of applications with the 8-bit 58.98 MHz Rabbit 4000 microprocessor enables a new generation of applications that use more memory for data and code. The RCM4300 series from Rabbit provides the onboard mass storage and provides even more performance and easier design than any other alternative in its price range.

Software design is supported by a new release of Rabbit’s Dynamic C tools. Dynamic C version 10.21 includes the new Megabyte Code Support (MCS), enabling designers to use over 1 Mbyte of SRAM for shared code and data. Pin-compatible with the complete family of Rabbit 4000-based core modules, the RCM4300 supports twice as much code space compared to any other Rabbit core module, enabling complex embedded applications such as data encryption and security-enabled Web servers.

The RCM4300 series also provides the capability to implement up to 1 gigabyte of storage using an industry standard miniSD memory card.

To ease design effort and reduce development time, the RCM4300 development kit is available. The development kit has the essentials to design a microprocessor-based embedded system with mass storage. The kit includes an RCM4300 with a 512MB miniSD card, a prototyping board, accessories and development tools to get design engineers up and running quickly. Along with the Dynamic C integrated development software—incorporating an editor, compiler and in-circuit debugger—there is also the FAT file system familiar to many programmers, RabbitWeb for creating HTML Web pages and Rabbit’s Secure Socket Layer (SSL) utility.

The price for the RCM4300 is $80 qty. 1000 and the RCM4310 is $69 qty. 1000. The RCM4300 development kit, which comes complete with all the hardware and software tools, is priced competitively at $299 Rabbit, Davis, CA. (530) 757-8400. [www.rabbit.com].

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57

Products&TECHNOLOGY Seismic Cabinet Enclosure from Optima Fits Tight Spaces

Li-Ion Battery Family Targets High-Rel Apps

Elma Electronic, Fremont, CA. 94538 (510) 656-3400. [www.elma.com].

Aeroflex, Plainview, NY. (516) 694-6700. [www.aeroflex.com].

In a design that allows the cabinet to fit in tight spaces, Optima EPS, an Elma Company, is offering Seismic cabinet enclosures with “French door” style access. In many cabinet enclosure applications, the racks are placed sideby-side closely together or are located in areas where an opened door would hit other equipment. The M-series cabinet from Optima solves this problem with doors that open outward with hinges justified inward. This allows the cabinet door to open fully in a French door style without the hinges or door interfering with other equipment nearby.

The M-series cabinets also feature cross bracing, back stiffeners and double-walled extrusions, providing a high strength-to-weight ratio to support and protect equipment during the full force of a seismic event. The design incorporates welded sockets and members, double cavity extrusions, thicker gauge rails and a welded base for extra durability. A variety of rail types and hole patterns are available to meet a wide range of requirements. Optional features of the M-series cabinets include dust and moisture protection, cooling systems, cable management systems, hard-mounting, electrical plug strips, and more. The stylish appearance of the cabinets is protected with paint adhesion and corrosion resistance via phosphate pre-treating and durable acrylic coating.

Pricing for the cabinets starts at under $1,300 depending on type, options and quantity.

Power Amplifier Meets Stringent VHF/UHF Comms Needs

With so much attention being paid to emerging digital communications, it’s easy to overlook the requirements of analog communications. Demand remains high for power amplifiers specifically designed to meet the strict requirements of VHF/UHF analog communications. AR Modular RF has responded with the KMW2046, a 125W power amplifier. The Model KMW2046 is an RF power amplifier module that supplies 100W continuous output power for OEM applications or integration into a user system. The module comprises a printed wiring assembly housed in a machined aluminum enclosure with feed-through capacitive terminals for connection to the DC power source.

The unit operates at a frequency range of 225 to 512 MHz. Gain control is 45 dB average at 12V/0V. Gain variation versus frequency is ±1.2 dB maximum at half power. Efficiency at 100W is rated at 30 percent. The KMW2046 provides a DC correct of 12A average at 24V, 14A maximum Noise specs include a harmonic distortion of -45 dBc average, -24 dBc worst case and spurious noise at ≤ -90 dBc. Operating temperature is -45° to +65°C. Baseplate temperature shutdown is at 71°C. AR Modular RF, Bothell, WA. (425) 485-9000. [www.ar-worldwide.com].

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February 2008

Lithium-ion battery technology keeps advancing. In long-range space applications using large-cell Li-ion batteries, the trend is toward subsystems that promote the safety and longevity of Li-ion while minimizing battery losses, and providing precision cell measurements via telemetry to the satellite operator. With that in mind, Aeroflex Plainview, at the NASA Aerospace Battery Workshop, Huntsville, Alabama, has announced their Battery Electronic Unit (BEU) family of Lithium-ion (Li-ion) cell balancing products.

Aeroflex’s BEUs promote and facilitate the safe use of large Li-ion batteries on spacecraft and aircraft missions of greater than 20 years.

Employing state-of-the-art DC/DC converter technology integrated with Aeroflex’s legacy RadHard MIL-STD-1553 databus and ASIC solutions, allows Aeroflex to deliver a low-mass, energy-conservative subsystem as the ideal solution for satellite programs that desire the benefits of Li-ion technology. The four Aeroflex BEU products all offer cell balancing to within +/- 5.0 mV, cell voltage monitoring accuracy +/-10 mV, total battery voltage monitoring accuracy +/-0.3 percent of full scale, MIL-STD-1553B telemetry and discrete output lines for critical signaling. Prices vary per each BEU product dependent on quantities and professional services associated with the specific statement of work.

COM Express Board Sports Core 2 Duo CPU

The COM Express formfactor is emerging as a flagship of compute-intensive bus-less modular computing. Nexcom has introduced its Core 2 Duo-based ICES 300 Computer-on-Module (COM) Express board, featuring the Intel GM965 and ICH8M chipset.

It supports Intel Core 2 Duo Merom/ Core 2 Duo Merom LV processors with 667/800 MHz FSB. In addition, it also supports 2 x DDR2 memory with 533/677 MHz up to 4 Gbytes. The ICES 300 COM Express offers high processing power and vivid graphic display solutions for advanced embedded applications.

COM Express products, such as the ICES 300, enable developers to implement the new peripherals with increased bandwidth and to take advantage of performance gain from CPU and chipsets, such as PCI Express and Serial ATA. Integrated with Intel Extreme Graphics 2 technology, the ICES 300 COM Express supports 1 x PCI Express x16 for superb graphic display through the carried board. It also supports other display types including LFP, LVDS and wide screen up to 1920 x 1200. The high-performance ICES 300 COM Express Module is compatible with the ICEB 8050 evaluation carrier board, which supports three SATA, eight USB 2.0 and five PCIe x1 lanes through the carrier board.

Nexcom, Fremont, CA. (510) 656-2248. [www.nexcom.com].

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NEWS, VIEWS &

Comment FEBRUARY 2008

Big Changes for 2008:

New Technology on Nervous Economic Footing

L

ast month two major events reverberated throughout the news media giving us a glimpse of things to come in at least some areas. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas brought us a look at the newest and latest consumer goodies while automakers took the wraps off their latest offerings at the International Automobile Show in Detroit. What, you ask, have these events to do with the embedded electronics business? First, the technology shown off at CES—from Apple’s paper thin notebook to Via’s latest chips—will be the technology embedded-computer designers will be working with in coming months and years. Second, automotive technology is moving increasingly toward a far greater electronic component than ever before. Everything from propulsion-management systems to entertainment to a fully automated, driverless car, is crowding autos with more and more electronic content. In fact, Microsoft’s Bill Gates addressed the Auto show via Satellite.

Smaller than a Breadbox

One of the themes that showed up at CES was a new breed of devices somewhere between the size of a cell phone and a laptop.

A lot of the big players are in the game with no less than Intel, Sony and Qualcomm leading the parade. The new breed of gadgets is expected to provide full Web access in your pocket—provided your pocket is big enough. Some surveys of users trying to make their cell phones serve as Web devices found that 86% were dissatisfied with their performance. Add one more to that number. Right now the companies are rallying around the x86 architecture and Windows operation system.

A New Contender

And while Intel has been aggressive in shrinking its chips, a new start-up, Via, is targeting that small computer market with an x86 chip of its own. The Taiwanese company has developed a very low-power processor for mobile applications. The chip, designed by design company Centaur and manufactured by Via, is aimed at less than full PC functionality and targeted to draw a maximum of 3.5 watts—compared with the 17 to 35 watts of today’s laptops. Expect to see this technology emerging on a variety of embedded platforms.

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February 2008

For what it’s worth (unless you are an AMD stockholder), Intel widened its lead over AMD as Intel posted an 8.5% fourth quarter growth. According to IDC, it holds 76.68% share of worldwide processor shipments up from 74.55% a year ago. According to the study, Intel led in all three categories including desktops, notebooks and servers. And while Intel is running away with the consumer business, AMD is strengthening its position in the embedded market with new products and approaches.

Autonomous Vehicle

GM brought its “self-driving” Tahoe (The Boss) to CES. The vehicle uses a combination of LIDAR, radar, vision and mapping/ GPS to see and avoid the world around it. The vehicle was developed by Carnegie Mellon University, General Motors and other partners for the DARPA 2007 Urban Challenge competition. It won the event by successfully navigating 60 miles of urban traffic, busy intersections and stop signs in less than six hours. Not sure I want to do that commute. The vehicle was controlled with a variety of embedded computers. GM CEO was reported commenting that the future of transportation may well lie with autonomous-type vehicles and that GM was planning to continue development.

Electronics for the Auto Market

At the recent auto show, there was a wide assortment of electronics on display. Said one analyst, “Auto makers are really starting to understand the need to bring high tech inside the car.”

One of the new items on display at this year’s event was SYNC, the Microsoft-developed communications system available only on Ford Motor Company cars. And while these and other gadgets were on display at the show, a lot of the activity surrounded various electric-car approaches. Many of the entrants boast a heritage of the same venture-capital investors that helped build Silicon Valley. Li-ion battery technology seems to lead the pack for both pure electric and hybrid models.

Drowning in a Sea of Small Form-Factor Boards?

As we’ve indicated in these pages there has been an explosion in small form-factor products. Many OEMs are finding they need more information and help in selecting technology suitable

for their end products. That help is now on the way. Industry veterans Paul Rosenfeld and Colin McCracken have started an organization to help people out of the woods when trying to select a small form-factor board, approach or processor. “We’ve seen customers make costly mistakes that they, in some cases, have had to live with for a long time,” says McCracken. “These could have been avoided,” he says.

The newly formed company, Abacus, plans to help OEMs as well as board vendors to sort out the embedded board business.

“There has been an explosion in the number and variety of formfactors,” continues McCracken, “from ultra mobility to conventional x86.” He says it’s not easy to sort out the right products particularly for OEMs that only have to make a decision every few years—and fortunately or not, have to live with that decision until the next cycle. Regulatory approvals from the military, FDA or other authority further complicate and delay the process.

“There are so many more vendors,” says Rosenfeld, “with different chipsets and feature content, it’s not clear what the best alternatives might be.” McCracken and Rosenfeld have already been helping clients sort through the complex products out there.

They can be reached at www.abacusipc.com.

Market Downturn

As this goes to press, the stock market—and perhaps the entire economy—is riding a turbulent cycle of ups and downs. A little earlier the NASDAQ (notable for its preponderance of hi-tech stocks) took a bath leaving the index 12% below where it began the year.

And among the remaining publicly traded companies in the embedded-computer market there was not a lot of joy. Mercury Computer reported 2Q earnings and showed a $6.09 million loss on charges.

The other players including RadiSys Corporation, Interphase and Performance Technology will be reporting earnings in February.

Figure 1 is a chart of the relative stock performance of these companies for the past three months. As is evident, Mercury was able to hold its own until its earnings report and then it fell off a cliff.

However, taken as a whole, the results are less than sterling.

Not one of the companies closed out the three months higher than they began. Let’s hope 1) this is not indicative of the embeddedcomputer industry in general, and 2) that these companies will turn around quickly.

As indicated last issue, many of the manufacturers of embedded computers remain bullish—however they are privately held companies and do not release their earnings publicly. As we noted, the fastest growing sector was in small form-factor products primarily in the control, medical, transportation and automation markets. Mercury is heavily skewed in the military and medical markets—though it does have specialty products in industrial automation and communications. RadiSys remains largely in the communications sector with its ATCA and AMC products, however it has a significant presence in some automation and control markets. Interphase and Performance remain largely in the communications market.

Roundup

Venture Capital investors sank close to $30 billion into U.S.-based companies last year, the most since 2001. A lot of the money went to “clean energy” and biotech firms. However, high-

SMA MRCY Daily

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PTIX

1/25/08

+30% +20% +10% +0% -10% -20% -30% -40%

November

Figure 1

December

08

-50%

Realtime stock performance for the past 3 months.

tech electronic and computer start-ups still collected their share.

STMicroelectronics saw a 93% profit fall based on restructuring and impairment charges. The Swiss chip maker also blamed the weak dollar. However, company executives expect to see growth of 4% to 6% this year.

Motorola completed its sale of its Embedded Computer Group to Emerson Power Systems. That done, Motorola stumbled reporting an 84% decline in fourth-quarter net as its mobile phone division continued to struggle. It would appear that Nokia is picking up at least part of the slack, posting a 44% increase for its fourth quarter, outpacing all rivals in the mobile-phone business.

Fujitsu is moving to split off its losing chip business. The company forecasts that its net will fall almost 40% through March—at least in part due to its semiconductor operations. Fujitsu apparently worked closely with Toshiba, which has been king of the hill as one of the world’s largest chip makers. It’s been aggressively expanding its semiconductor operations, signing deals last year to buy fab lines from Sony.

Start-up Nextreme, Inc. is providing engineering samples of its heat removing technology, talking with virtually every major semiconductor manufacturer. Its microelectronic technology apparently integrates cooling into the copper pillar bumps on flip chips. For more information on Nextreme’s Thermal Copper Pillar Bump approach, visit its website at www.Nextreme.com.

Warren Andrews Associate Publisher February 2008

61

is to research the latest datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you in touch with the right resource.

Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology, Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products you are searching for.

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Advertiser Index Get Connected with technology and companies providing solutions now Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you in touch with the right resource. Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology, Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products you are searching for.

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Company

Page

Website

Acromag.............................................................................................................. 17.................................................................................................. www.acromag.com Critical I/O..........................................................................................................15...................................................................................................www.criticalio.com

Products

End of Article

Data Acquisition Showcase..................................................................................37..............................................................................................................................

Data Devices Corporation....................................................................................25................................................................................................... www.ddc-web.com Datalight.............................................................................................................29.................................................................................................. www.datalight.com

Get Connected with companies and

Get Connected

Diamond ............................................................................31......................................................................................www.diamondsystems.com productsSystems featuredCorporation. in this section.

www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected

with companies mentioned in this article.

www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected Elma Bustronic Corp............................................................................................19.......................................................................................... www.elmabustronic.com Eurotech.............................................................................................................41...................................................................................................... www.eurotech.it Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc......................................................................27.....................................................................................................www.xes-inc.com

Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article.

GE Fanuc Embedded Systems................................................................................4................................................................................... www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnectedwww.gefanucembedded.com

Get Connected with companies and products featured in this section.

www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected Harting, Inc. EPT..................................................................................................40...............................................................................www.harting.com, www.ept.com McObject LLC......................................................................................................55................................................................................................. www.mcobject.com Mesa Electronics.................................................................................................57.................................................................................................. www.mesanet.com Microsoft Windows Embedded............................................................................2,3................................................................................www.microsoft.com/embedded Moxa Technologies..............................................................................................33....................................................................................................... www.moxa.com MVACEC..............................................................................................................59.................................................... www.mvacec.com/www.mountainviewalliance.org One Stop Systems...............................................................................................45...................................................................................... www.onestopsystems.com Orion Technologies,Inc...........................................................................................6..............................................................................................www.otisolutions.com Performance Technologies.....................................................................................8............................................................................................................ www.pt.com Phoenix International...........................................................................................57.................................................................................................. www.phenxint.com Real-Time & Embedded Computing Conference....................................................53........................................................................................................www.rtecc.com Red Rock Technologies, Inc.................................................................................55............................................................................................. www.redrocktech.com Sensoray Company..............................................................................................20..................................................................................................www.sensoray.com Thales Computers...............................................................................................11...................................................................................... www.thalescomputers.com White Electronic Designs.....................................................................................64........................................................................................................www.wedc.com Wind River Systems, Inc......................................................................................63.................................................................................................. www.windriver.com

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62

February 2008

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