William Wong
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ED Online ID #13712 |
October 4, 2006
The mood was upbeat at this year's Boston Embedded Systems Conference (ESC), and the floor was more crowded than it has been in the past. Even more importantly, designers were asking the right questions and not just kicking the tires. Vendors had a good bit to show as well, with significantly more production models than prototypes or previews. Technologies like ZigBee, Serial ATA and PCI Express were out in force.
The following is a quick snapshot of the show. I did not get to list all the companies and their products below, so check out the list of linked articles, too.
ESC Software News
One of the most notable items on the floor was Sun Microsystems' real-time Java (see video), highlighted by the Java slot car race that had been introduced at JavaOne. It was open to any programmer who wanted to take a crack at programming with real-time Java. The track had sensors placed around it and the only control was the duration of power to the car. It was lots of fun and some of the cars actually finished the race.
Telelogic was showing off the latest I-Logix Rhapsody. This release adds Mathworks Simulink integration. It also includes better support for the embedded programmer, allowing smoother movement between the conventional IDE and model-based development. I'll have more on this later in EIED Online.
Mentor Graphics' Eclipse-based IDE EDGE development tools are now $2995/seat. This package includes a number of enhancements, but the price point is significantly lower. With its Eclipse-based Optima IDE, Enea also announced their pricing of $3000/seat — looks like a trend. Enea's operating system and LINX interprocess communication services offer a way to take advantage of multicore and network processing environments.
Green Hill Software was showing off its Multi IDE version 5. It adds enhancements to its TimeMachine trace facility, along with a new static source code analyzer named DoubleCheck. It also has a new commuter licensing option.
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