[Lab Bench Online]
Doing The Robot, And More, At ESC 2008
Robots, USB, micros, multimedia, boards, software, hands-on demos...what's not to like about ESC 2008?
William Wong
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ED Online ID #20107 |
November 11, 2008
Boards And Multimedia Atoms were everywhere. Intel has done a great job of seeding the industry, and real boards were out in force at ESC, with the occasional cry of higher end multicore platforms. InHand’s FireFly (Fig. 7) has a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor with a US15W System Controller Hub. It has wireless options for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth plus expansion slots like microSD and ExpressCard.
As with most board vendors, Kontron had its range of products on display with quite a few new ones. On the CompactPCI side is the CP3210, a rugged 3U conduction cooled board with a 733MHz PowerPC G3 750FX processor. There were some ATX and Flex-ATX motherboards (Fig. 8) with new 45-nm Intel Core2 Quad processors. These have 7-year, long cycle support.
Adlink Technology Express-AT is a COM Express module that also holds an Intel Atom. It uses the Intel 945GSE Express chipset. The hi-res video supports SDTV and HDTV resolutions. SATA, PATA, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 round out the platform.
AMD gave me a glimpse at the Sempron 200U and 210U. These will likely give the Atom some stiff competition, and should be available soon.
VIA Technologies was also showing off their new 1.6-GHz Nano. It was matched to a CN896 digital media IGP chipset on a Mini-ITX motherboard with a 16x PCIe slot. The Nano is optimized for crypto chores that are likely to be prevalent in multimedia environments.
Amulet Technologies had a new chip for its smart LCD panels. The Graphical OS Chip makes creation of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for color LCDs almost a trivial exercise. It supports a range of interfaces including serial and USB.
I had a chat with Embedded Systems Design. They are primarily a consulting and design firm, but they also had a neat box based on one of their projects. The StreamBlade line is a box with an LCD display and keypanel, a 32-bit microcontroller with Ethernet support and control over a batch of FPGAs and I/O modules. The latter can handle a pair of 28 high-speed channels. Why design a custom system for data capture or generation when you can just program a StreamBlade?
Micros STMicroelectronics actually added a DSP library for its Corex-M3 STM32 microcontrollers (MCUs). The STM32 will not challenge high-end DSPs, but if the DSP chores are more moderate then these chips and this library might be all you need. The STM32 is ideal for many digital-signal-control applications. For example, the STM32F103 line will handle complex 256-point, 16-bit radix-4 FFT in only 362 µs.
Analog Devices was showing off its new Blackfin BF51x series. I’ll be taking a close look at this later. The 400-MHz processors are available with 116-Kbytes of RAM plus an optional 4-Mbits of SPI flash memory. Analog Devices also had a private presentation with a number of customers using a range of processors from Analog Devices. I’ll write that one up separately.
Texas Instruments also had a wide range of products on display including the new triple core TMS320C6474. It uses 1 GHz TMS320C64x+ cores but consumes a third less power than a comparable system and it costs less. All this is packed into a 23- by 23-mm BGA that draws under 25 W. It supports DDR2 memory.
Atmel ran a lot by me as well. Some of it included their new EVK1105 AVR32-based audio dev kit. It has an Ethernet connection, a QVGA display and QTouch capacitive touch inputs. There is a socket for an iPod but you need to get a license from Apple if you plan on integrating with an iPod. The kit can be used as a multimedia platform or support for other devices as well.
Atmel’s latest XMega incorporates Atmel’s 8-channel event system that allows interrupts to trigger operations like data capture without processor intervention as well as 4-channel DMA. It also has as a 500-nA real-time clock.
The ARM0-basedAtmel AT01SAM9M10 can cut BOM cost by 50% by eliminating 3-V level shifters when matching the chip with most 3-V LCD displays. Many multimedia microcontrollers have moved to a lower voltage base forcing the need for level shifters until matching voltage displays become available.
Microchip was showing off chips they announced earlier in the year but its highlight at the show was the new MPLAB ICD 3 (Fig. 9). This version runs USB 2.0 and requires only a USB connection. No more power bricks. It is significantly faster, adds more debugging capability for the MPLAB IDE. It will also handle all Microchip chips from its 8-bit PICs to the 32-bit PIC32. One is in the mail so a hands-on review is in order sometime in the future.
Software Looking to build solid software? Don’t like bugs? You are not the only one. If you are looking for some help with embedded design techniques then you might want to check out Netrino. They provide embedded training, consulting, and product development. One of the things that came out from my discussion with Michael Barr of Netrino was the use of static analysis tools to create zero defect software.
Not surprisingly, I talked with a number of static-analysis tool vendors at the show, including Grammatech and LDRA Software Technology. Grammatech’s CodeSonar received an update. CodeSonar does whole program interprocedural analysis of C/C++ code. LDRA’s offering now includes MISRA C and CERT C. Its new TBvision product extends static analysis to security vulnerabilities and fault detection.
Real Time Innovations moved its RTI Data Distribution System (DDS) into the DO-178B realm. DDS provides a distributed publish-subscribe environment that can span backplanes and networks.
The Mathworks updated its fixed-point support with Simulink Fixed Point 6. This works with the MathWorks Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder that can generate bit-accurate production code from fixed-point models. The system handles different word sizes up to 128 bits. This allows it to support systems like Texas Instruments’ TMS320C6000 DSP that has a 40-bit accumulator.
Green Hills Software was showing off an enhanced version of its Platform for Secure Wireless Devices. This includes drivers for Atheros Communications 802.11A/B/G plus commercial-grade Devicescape security supplicants.
Microsoft had its usual spread with lots of partners. Likewise, Microsoft logos were strewn around the booths of partners. The latest version of Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard (formally Windows Embedded XP) has been out and in use for awhile. The latest announcements included Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6 and the lightweight Microsoft .NET Micro Framework 3.0. The .NET Micro Framework is small and faster. It adds a long list of features including Wi-Fi integration, integration with Visual Studio 2008. It now runs on a wider range of platforms including Analog Devices’ Blackfin and other chips with less than 64-Kbytes of RAM.
I spoke with Allegro Software about their support of Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). Those who have not heard of DLNA should check out my consumer electronics article coming up in our December 11th issue.
Allegro Software is one of the premier suppliers of DLNA network stacks and services that are built on UPNP. Its RomPlug Toolkits support the range of DLAN platforms from basic media servers to advanced media renders.
Looking for a new language to do secure, reliable programs in? Check out SPARK from Praxis High Integrity Systems. Okay, it’s not new, but it is a subset of Ada that is designed for making correct programs. The correctness is done in a provable fashion and the approach is highly successful. Praxis is partnering with AdaCore, an Ada vendor delivering GNAT Pro Ada development tools. Check out Praxis' and AdaCore’s site and more from me later about some of the projects done in SPARK and about SPARK in general. That’s going to be an article all by itself.
That’s it for now. The train will be rolling into Trenton soon so I need to wrap this up for publication. I’ll be touching on other things I saw at ESC in subsequent Lab Bench Online columns and in print.
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