Embedded Hotspot

We're down to the semifinals, and the robots are ready. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected the 36 teams that will move on to the next round of the 2007 Urban Challenge, scheduled for October 26-31 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. The top 20 teams from this national qualifying event (NQE) will then participate in the finals on November 3. The program challenges teams to develop...

The folks on Capitol Hill and in the White House seem determined, one way or another, to reform immigration. The likely outcome will be tighter border control and fewer immigrant workers. This leaves farmers with a rather ugly dilemma: leave some fruit in the field to rot and raise produce prices-a trend that's happening now and scaring farmers-or find an alternative harvesting method. Companies like Vision Robotics Corp. (VRC) are making the latter possible...

The release of Intel's Thread Building Blocks 2.0 (TBB) coincides with the company's announcement to take it open source. Both are significant announcements. TBB is designed to make efficient use of multiple processing cores in a symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) environment (see "Multiple Threads Make Chunk Change" at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 13645). C/C++ applications utilize TBB syntactic extensions. The latest version of TBB is based on...

Biometrics continue to be an important security solution, with fingerprint recognition among the most common implementations (see "Biometrics Wields A Double-Edged Sword" at www.electronicdesign. com, ED Online 10605). Atmel and ODI Security have combined forces to design a module that simplifies system integration. The Fingerprint Matching Module uses Atmel's FingerChip sensor and a specialized ARM7 microcontroller (...

ZigBee and 802.15.4 are hot these days, even though the bandwidth tops out at 250 kbits/s. Chips are available from a variety of sources. Yet many developers will use modules to simplify designs and eliminate the Federal Communications Commission approval process. I've been reviewing many of these ZigBee/802.15.4 kits, including those based on modules (see "ZigBee Kits" at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 11570, and "ZigBee Kits 2" at ED...

Concurrent Technologies' rugged, low-power, 3U CompactPCI TP 302/320 single-board computer (SBC) supports the 1.4-GHz Intel Pentium M processor LV 738. It uses the Intel 855GME GMCH chip set and supports up to 1 Gbyte of soldered 333-MHz DDR SDRAM. Its industrial version can handle from 40°C to 85°C. It has four serial, four USB, two Ethernet, two Serial ATA, and two IDE ports. It also supports front- and rearpanel DVI interfaces with resolutions of up to 2048...

Trango Virtual Processors is delivering its virtual-machine manager (VMM) hypervisor for the ARM6 platform. The VMM supports up to 256 virtual machines (VMs) on ARM1136J(F)-STM, ARM1156T2(F)STM, and ARM1176JZ(F)-STM CPU cores. The VMs include debugging and power-management support. Global services and resources can be configured using the company's Eclipse-based software development kit (SDK). ...

Real-Time Innovations' Real-Time Specification for Java Extensions Kit for RTI Data Distribution Service and Sun Java Real Time System brings the Object Management Group's Data Distribution Service to Java developers. It allows distributed and heterogeneous systems written in C, C++, Ada, and Java to share information using DDS. Pricing begins at $7200 for UltraSPARC and x86 hosts. www.rti.com...

If you don't need the complexity that ZigBee or Bluetooth offers, but wireless capability is still a design requirement, then check out Texas Instruments' eZ430-RF2500 (Fig. 1). This device combines TI's 16-MHz 16-bit MSP430F2274 microcontroller with Chipcon's CC2500 RF transceiver chip on a removable target board (Fig. 2). This low-cost development tool is designed for...

Tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) soon will be required on most vehicles. Designed to meet these upcoming standards, Freescale Semiconductor's MPXY8300 can fit in each tire (Fig. 1). Typically, the chip and its battery would be mounted on the valve stem. A central control unit would receive information from these remote sensors and give drivers real-time information. A TPMS can help extend the life of a tire...

What is NAND flash memory? NAND flash is a type of nonvolatile memory that is accessed like a mass storage device (e.g., a hard drive). A form of electronically erasable programmable readonly memory (EEPROM), NAND flash is programmed, erased, and reprogrammed in large blocks. It's called NAND because at the circuit level, it's similar to the NAND logic function. Another type of flash is NOR flash (...

It was bound to happen. Hacking into Apple's iPhone via its Web browser shouldn't surprise developers (see "Security Firm: iPhone Can Be Hacked" at www.electronicdesign.com,ED Online 16177). The iPhone is based on Apple's OS X operating system and applications, which have tended to draw less fire from attackers than Windows. But large systems are bound to have holes. Most developers don't have to contend with the iPhone yet. Yet the number of new networked devices,...

Cell phones have been closed devices since their inception, but things are changing as standard platforms emerge. Open-Moko's Neo 1973 is a stylish device with a 266-MHz ARM-based Samsung S3C2410 system-on-a-chip that runs GNU/Linux and has a GNU/Linux-based development environment. The software platform uses the X window system and the GTK+ toolkit. It has a 2.8-in. VGA TFT color display, 128 Mbytes of RAM, and 64 Mbytes of NAND flash with a 512-Mbyte SDIOcapable ...

Gumstix and PrismTech are partnering to bring software-defined radio (SDR) to the tiny (80 by 20 mm) Gumstix platform. The PrismTech Spectra OE SCA-compliant software runs on the XScale microcontroller on top of Linux. The software includes an SCA 2.2.2 framework, CORBA middleware, and CORBA Object Services. PrismTech's model-based Spectra Tool suite supports the system. www.gumstix.com ...

Welcome to Electronic Design's third annual Wireless Everywhere issue. This edition comes at a time when 3G cellular is in full swing and other technologies such as Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and nearfield communications (NFC) are beginning to penetrate the market, much like the state of Wi-Fi several years ago. And no matter where you look, you'll see wireless devices all around. Beginning with our Industry Techview, assistant editor Kristina Fiore delves...

At an event held for editors at the recently concluded NIWeek, innovation was the topic of discussion. On the firing line were National Instruments executives James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, Mike Santori, and Tim Dehne. When asked about innovation, Truchard made the connection between innovation and quality. Essentially, innovation brings a product, such as LabVIEW, to life. The ability to continuously innovate ensures product quality over the long term. LabVIEW 8.5,...

The Boston Embedded Systems Conference has always been smaller than its west coast cousin. Scheduled for Sept. 18-21 at the Hynes Convention Center, though, this show is slightly more system-oriented. And while it has fluctuated in size over the years, it has picked up new vendors like Microchip, so expect some interesting developments in Beantown. Conference regulars will show off their newest fare, like Versalogic, which will display its latest SPX modules (see...

Exponential improvements in hardware capacity made possible by Moore’s Law have substantially expanded the size and complexity of embedded-system software. For many embedded software products, the amount of software deployed in each new revision of the product doubles every 18 to 36 months. The challenges of managing this rapid expansion of software size require innovative approaches and improved software engineering disciplines. One key to tackling the growing size and...

Seldom does a design team receive carte blanche—at whatever the cost—to meet performance or power specifications. But given the partitioning and segmentation of many IC design flows, it’s not uncommon for a particular team to optimize for one goal, say performance, without focusing on the implications it could have on the overall cost of the packaged chip. Even the most conscientious and experienced designers know it isn’t easy to accurately predict the...

System design today hinges on two key steps: your ability to adequately select and analyze the available building blocks, and then stirring in the "special sauce" that makes your product unique. The more aware you are of the available building blocks you can trust, the more time you can spend perfecting the flavor of your sauce. To assist the chef, here's a list of the latest intellectual-property (IP) offerings, the tools to help with the IP selection process, and some...