[Technology Report]
Know The Way To San Jose For This Year's ESC, Or Else
PCI Express and ZigBee are among the many sizzling technologies crowding the marquee at the 2006 Embedded Systems Conference.
This year's Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) is shaping up to be one of the hottest shows ever. Vendor expectations for the show, scheduled for April 3-7 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., reflect the cautious but generally upbeat economy. Visitors will find new technologies like PCI Express and Serial ATA as well as new processor architectures making big splashes.
But don't be hypnotized by just the new developments. Plenty of refinements in existing technologies, from PC/104 data-acquisition boards to FPGA layout programs, will make their mark. Check out my EiED Online review for more products and technology happenings at the show. For now, here's a preview of some announcements that are certain to make this year's Embedded Systems Conference the place to be.
DEV TOOLS AND KITS Look fast before someone slips this marvel into his pocket. Texas Instruments' eZ430-F2013 packs an MSP430F2013 microcontroller unit (MCU) and a USB Spy biwire debug emulator into a USB stick (Fig. 1). In fact, the latter takes up more room than the removable target board. Best of all, the complete package (including software) costs only $20.
The eZ430-F2013 isn't the first tiny development tool—Silicon Labs' ToolStik uses the same approach (see "Development Kits In USB Dongles" at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 11854). The big difference is that TI's solution lets designers split the emulator from the target board. TI's target board also provides external access to all 14 pins.
The MSP430F2013 MCU comes in a 4- by 4-mm thin-shrink small-outline package. It has 2 kbytes of flash, 128 bytes of RAM, a 16-bit sigmadelta analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a serial port with SPI and I2C support, and an on-chip clock. The $1.65 chip supports a 500-nA power-down mode. A wide range of MSP430 chips with the same pinout starts at $0.55.
The MSP430F2013 is an interesting tool choice for a host of applications, such as robotics and process control prototyping. The development package includes a free IAR Kick Start Embedded Workbench integrated development environment (IDE) that includes a debugger, assembler, and C compiler. It's the same tool chain used in the commercial IDE package. I'll take a hands-on look at this system in the near future and post a review at www.electronicdesign.com/eiedonline.
Hi-Tech Software also plans to show off a series of new products for developers at the show, including its PICC Enterprise Edition. This compiler package supports all of Microchip's 10/12/14/16/17/18 series PICs, including the 16-bit dsPIC digital signal controller. Hi-Tech will also present its ARM compiler suite and support for Texas Instruments' MPS430.
PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES: NEW AND OLD ESC affords attendees the unique opportunity to talk with the designers of the latest processor architectures. For example, Atmel's AVR32 uses a completely new 32-bit architecture with a vector multiplier coprocessor (see "A New Player In The 32-Bit Processor Field," ED Online ID 11939). It has DSP and SIMD (single-instruction multiple-data) instructions, Java bytecode support, and a compact instruction set. The chip targets low-power, high-performance multimedia applications.
The AP7000 multimedia processor chip also features the new architecture (Fig. 2). The AP7000 includes bit-stream audio digital-to-analog converter (DAC), LCD, and hard-disk controllers. It offers 480-Mbit/s USB 2.0 with an on-chip physical layer (PHY), two 10/100 Ethernet media-access controllers (MACs), and a peripheral DMA controller. Other peripherals include serial ports, I2C, SPI, PS2, and a synchronous serial module (SSC) supporting most serial communication protocols.
Dynamic frequency scaling and fine control over power to all subsystems enable the chip to operate in power-sensitive applications. For even lower-power applications, Atmel will exhibit its picoPower technology, which is aimed at the 8-bit AVR family. Its ultra-low-power, on-chip 32-kHz oscillator draws less than 300 nA, while the overall chip draws 650 nA.
Philips Semiconductor, meanwhile, will present a new ARM7-based microcontroller. The LPC2800 is ideal for portable applications because it can be powered by a single 1.5-V battery, its USB port, or an external power supply. The chip boasts a USB 2.0 high-speed (480 Mbits/s) interface with on-chip transceiver and 1 Mbyte of flash memory.
Show attendees can also view Philips' ARM926EJ-based LPC3000 processors (see "Vector-Processing MCU Skimps On Power," ED Online 12046). This low-power chip brings vector processing to multimedia applications. The Nohau development system works with ARM's RealView Developers Kit (Fig. 3). This looks to be a really hot combination. I'll do a hands-on review of this kit for EiED Online as well.
MIPS won't be left out of the fray. Its 34K core family is the first to implement the MT application-specific extension (ASE) plus the MIPS DSP ASE. The 34K cores can be configured with a maximum of two virtual processing elements (VPEs) and five thread contexts. The dual VPEs can provide a symmetric-multiprocessing (SMP) environment, or they can run two independent operating systems. Companies like iVivity currently use MIPS 34K.
Be sure to check out Intel's and AMD's latest dual-core, 64-bit processors, in addition to their low-power, single-core processors. They have some interesting chip sets and processor chips in the Pentium, Xeon, Opteron, and Athlon lines. Companies such as VIA Technologies will reveal chip sets that deliver PCI Express and HyperTransport connectivity.
And don't forget about VIA Technologies, who will be presenting its Eden processor line. The company's dual-processor board, the VT310-DP, is a Mini-ITX board with Fast and Gig Ethernet interfaces plus EIDE, SATA, and RAID disk support. The CN400 North Bridge provides hardware multimedia and graphics support.
HIGH-SPEED SERIAL PCI Express has been wowing the industry with its development on the PC side, from laptops to servers. With the broader availability of PCI Express chip sets and bridge and switch chips, design has become significantly easier.
One particularly bustling area for PCI Express involves laptop docking stations. It should be interesting to follow due to the reduced pin requirements and the high speed available with even a single PCI Express lane.
PLX Technology's PEX 8517 five-port, 16-lane switch chip will be on display, along with the PEX 8508 five-port, eight-lane switch. The company also plans to show off its PEX 8311. This one-lane PCI Express to 32-bit, 66-MHz local bus bridge supports non-PCI peripherals. It also can provide a simple front end for FPGAs.
Other high-speed serial technologies are on the docket, too. Companies like SBE, SBS Technologies, and VMetro will exhibit boards that incorporate Serial RapidIO, InfiniBand, Gigabit Ethernet, and more.
Much of this was presented at January's Bus & Board Conference in Long Beach, Calif., but that show's attendance is more limited (see "Bus and Board Show: Part 1" at ED Online 11977). ESC attendees will get a chance to check out the new boards and backplanes for VXS (VITA-41), VPX (VITA 46), VPX-REDI (VITA-48), AdvancedTCA, CompactTCA, and CompactPCI form factors.
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