Bill is a staff editor for Electronic Design focusing on embedded,
software, and systems. He is also the editor for the Embedded in Electronic Design department and the weekly hands-on column, EiED Online. He prefers press releases via email and images should be at least 300dpi. Links to product photos is prefered. Email address: bwong@penton.com Web site: http://www.elecdesign.com/Departments/DepartmentID/67/67.html
1910 results found for William Wong, displaying items 1 - 20
August 28, 2008[Lab Bench] MILS, MSL, MLS: Figuring Out All Those Secure Acronyms
Few embedded designs are isolated these days. Still, most users and quite a few developers only think of names and passwords when it comes to security. Yet there’s much more, and it really needs to be incorporated throughout the design process. It also means you need to grok security. I thought I did until I had to complete a more complex installation of multiple Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) systems running as virtual machines (VMs) on a Xen server. I ...
August 28, 2008[Technology Report] Dev Kits Help Alleviate Those FPGA Design Woes
Design at the logic level for board-level products is rare. If it can’t be done with a microcontroller or two, then what’s a designer to do? FPGAs have been the answer for years, but FPGA tools required a steep learning curve. Likewise, FPGAs had a price premium and high power requirements, and external support requirements often proved challenging. All of that has changed, though. Inexpensive FPGAs are now the norm. High-performance products remain...
August 26, 2008
[Lab Bench Online] VIA ARTiGO: Small But Powerful
The Technology Editor Bill Wong runs the VIA Technologies’ Pico-ITX-based ARTiGO through its paces along with Fujitsu’s 320-Gbyte SATA drive.
August 12, 2008
[ED Bookstore] Professional Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) is Microsoft’s answer to the rise in interest of robots. MRDS is a major commitment by Microsoft and a big chunk of software—although the large portion (over 800 pages) of the book reflects the complexity that MRDS brings to the table.
August 14, 2008[Lab Bench] The Challenge: Handling 1000 Cores Wirelessly
Intel and other companies are forecasting a single chip with 1000 cores. Programming these chips will be a challenge, but there is another arena with similar challenges. Cores are proliferating in the wireless sensor and control arena, with 802.15.4 being the underlying protocol of choice. Wireless chip vendors like Ember, Freescale, and Texas Instruments are churning out an array of options that often incorporate a compact 8-, 15-, or 32-bit core to handle...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Wireless Python Key To Mobile Robot
Programming wireless devices can be a chore, but the use of scripting languages like Python can turn rapid frustration into rapid development. I tested this theory with the Synapse Wireless EK2500 development kit, which I combined with iRobot’s Create here in the lab (see “Commanding The iRobot Create” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online ID ...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Rugged Gateway Links ZigBee And Cellular
Digi International’s ConnectPort X4 NEMA provides a rugged link between a cellular and ZigBee network. The gateway features Python programming support in addition to serial, Ethernet, and USB interfaces. The unit is designed to be a gateway to other Digi Drop-in Networking products (see “ZigBee Kits 5” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online ...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Fanless Mini-ITX Motherboard Stays Cool
ITOX’s G5G100-L10C Mini-ITX motherboard sports heatsinks to keep its 1-GHz Celeron M Ultra Low Voltage 373 processor cool. The chip has a 512-kbyte cache and a 400-MHz front-side bus. The system uses less than 17 W. The board utilizes the Mobile Intel 910GMLE Express chip set with the Intel ICH6M I/O controller hub and the GMA 900 graphics adapter. Also, there is a 1-Gbit Ethernet port, eight serial ports, two SATA ports, an Ultra- DMA/100...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] ZigBee Chip Goes 32 Bits
Jennic’s JN5139 brings 32-bit computing to ZigBee Pro. It’s built around a 32-bit, 16 MIPS RISC core, 96 kbytes of RAM, and 192 kbytes of ROM. Developers can use the JenNet stack, 6LoWAPAN IP, or ZigBee Pro protocol stack. Peripherals include 21 GPIO, I2C, SPI, two serial ports, a four-channel, 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and dual 11-bit digital-toanalog converters (DACs). A 48-byte one-time programmable (OTP) eFuse stores the MAC ...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Rugged Displays Get Wide
Stealth Computer’s SV-2400 wraps a steel enclosure around a widescreen, 24-in. LCD. The system features an optional USB-based, capacitive touchscreen interface designed for rugged environments. The NEMA 4/IP56 LCD can withstand water, dust, and dirt. It features a 5-ms response time, 1920-by-1200 resolution, a 16:10 aspect ratio with 250 nits of brightness, a 160° viewing angle, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. It accepts DVI and...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Linux L2/L3 Middleware Targets Multicore Solutions
6WINDGate EDS and SDS software from 6WIND addresses telecom applications such as wireless infrastructure. The EDS version enables Fast Path implementation as a Linux kernel module between the Linux networking stack and the interface drivers. The SDS version takes advantage of the Multi-Core Executive Environment (MCEE). Also, the EDS version targets quad-core x86 processor platforms and runs on platforms such as Cavium’s MIPS64- based multicore...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Constructing Tiered Wireless Sensor Networks
Packet processing needs processing power. Thatâ??s what GE Fanuc delivers with its WANic 5434 Packet Processor (see the figure). The PCI Express-based board can handle wire speeds up to 4 Gbits/s. It also can handle packet layers 2 through 7, making complex security processing applications. The WANic 5434 is based on Caviumâ??s 500-MHz CN5434-NSP Octeon chip,...
August 14, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Multicore For WANs
The University of Southern California is the home of Tenet, a tiered wireless sensor network project. The architectures combine PC-class network masters with a horde of wireless micro motes that are typically 802.15.4 nodes. Generally, these are very low-power devices. Version 2.0 is available for download from the Tenet project’s Web site. The master tier runs on Linux or Windows (courtesy of Cygwin). The applications that run on...
July 24, 2008[Lab Bench] What Will You Do With 1 TFLOP Of Double-Precision Power?
Don’t look now, but you may have a supercomputer on your desk. It’s hiding in your video card. While it won’t make your word processor faster, it may improve the transcoding speed when you’re moving movies to your mobile Internet device. Intel and AMD have been pushing multicore in the 64-bit x86 realm with only four-core chips at this point. Intel’s 80-core Polaris is designed to push the envelope, but AMD and NVidia have other ideas, at least when it ...
July 15, 2008
[Lab Bench Online] MontaVista µSELinux
Technology Editor Bill Wong talks with MontaVista about Mobilinux 5.0, which includes support for SELinux security features.
July 10, 2008[Leapfrog: First Look] SIMT Architecture Delivers Double-Precision Teraflops
NVidia’s T10 architecture brings double-precision floating point to the company’s massively parallel computing platform. This graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture also is used in NVidia’s consumer graphics boards. Both are supported by the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). The Tesla S1070 1U rack-mount system incorporates four of the Tesla T10 boards, each with a single chip containing 240 cores ...
July 10, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Make Or Buy: Module Mania
Make it low-power. Buying off-the-shelf parts to meet these criteria is still a challenge, but the latest crop of modules makes the job easier. Modules let designers develop custom configurations with minimum moving the design of the critical aspects of the system to the module vendors. This includes the processor and memory subsystem and usually most, if not all, of the peripheral interface. A carrier board typically contains connectors and...
July 10, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Module Targets Rugged Spec
Men Micro’s ESMexpress-based XM50 targets the pending VITA 59, RSE Rugged System-On-Module Express standard. The 1.5-GHz PowerQUICC III MPC8548 processor has access to 2 Gbytes of ECC DDR2 SDRAM memory in addition to nonvolatile SRAM and FRAM. The 12-W board has three Gigabit Ethernet ports, five USB ports, three SATA ports, and an 8x PCI Express port. The XM50 also plugs into a carrier board and is enclosed in a metal case...
July 10, 2008[Embedded in Electronic Design] Tint Carrier And SBC Keep Cool
Take one SpaceSaver-II. Attach one GMS P70x. Start developing on one slick platform with Mini-PCI Express and a 2.16-GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The 4- by 4-in. SpaceSaver-II provides these connectors: three video (NTSC, RGB, DVI), audio with 2.5-W amp, two SATA, IDE, two serial, eight GPIO, five USB, LVDS LCD, Mini-PCI Express, Express- Card, Compact Flash, two Gigabit Ethernet, plus support for a 1.8-in. solidstate hard drive. The...
Bill is a staff editor for Electronic Design focusing on embedded,
software, and systems. He is also the editor for the Embedded in Electronic Design department and the weekly hands-on column, EiED Online. He prefers press releases via email and images should be at least 300dpi. Links to product photos is prefered.
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