Embedded Seminar

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	Webinar Calendar for the week of: January 03, 2012
	Complimentary Online Seminars Join us from the comfort of your computer. Managing Hierarchical, Low Power Design Challenges with the Lynx Design System Tuesday, January 17 - 10:00 AM PT / 01:00 PM ET Most advanced SoCs have to address power consumption and dissipation whether the design is targeted for a desktop or portable application. In this seminar, we will demonstrate silicon-proven methodologies to describe power intent with IEEE 1801 (UPF) using a hierarchical design flow to address power consumption and design size concurrently. We will walk you through some of the key steps in implementing and analyzing a hierarchical design using UPF for both bottom-up and top-down Synopsys Galaxy-based flows. On-Demand webinars: Visit our On Demand Archive, or see below for one you may have missed... Brilliant Embedded Solutions. Faster. On-Demand Less than 2% of the world's computer chips actually go into computers. The other 98% are all embedded MCUs. Today's MCU chips give NASA's moon lander a run for its money, yet cost less than a tall latté. See and hear how the wealth of 32-bit MCUs can open up design doors for engineers and programmers accustomed to cramped, underpowered, and awkward 8-bit or 16-bit chips. The 32-bit revolution is upon us. How will you use the performance? Calibre® PERC™: Effective Reliability and Low Power Verification On-Demand Protecting against ESD, Latch-up, reliability and other EOS events can be challenging, particularly with when multiple power domains and thin-oxide gates are used extensively. This webinar discusses how designers can detect sources of reliability issues within their designs and effectively verify signal paths in multi-power domain designs. Also highlighted are the benefits of voltage dependant, and voltage aware checks - both on the topological representation of designs (netlist), and the physical layout. Low cost constant current regulator (CCR) charging solution for rechargeable batteries On-Demand This webinar will look at how a constant current regulator or CCR can be used to create a low power, low cost, high efficiency charging solution that is suitable for rechargeable batteries covering a broad selection of different target applications, from standard AA batteries used in the domestic environment, to portable consumer devices, right through to handheld power tools. Circuit Validation Using 12-bit ADC's in Wide-Bandwidth Digital Oscilloscopes On-Demand Join LeCroy as we look at the details of these technology improvements for specific application examples. Comparisons of 12 bit versus 8 bit will be discussed with attention on: methods to improve accuracy; 12 bit scopes performance versus stretching the performance of 8 bit scopes using averaging and filtering; practical design examples of detecting and measuring small signals buried in large signals; 12 bit versus 8 bit ADC's with frequency domain measurements. Discover the simplicity and high performance of Dual Core Cortex-M4, with flexible and configurable cores and peripherals On-Demand Learn how latest innovations in NXP's asymmetrical dual-core LPC4300 allow developers to maximize performance in signal processing and microcontroller applications including digital audio, industrial automation and motor control without adding additional costs. Providing almost twice the performance without the cost and complexity of typical dual-cores, the LPC4300's Cortex-M0 co-processor can offload many of the data movement and I/O handling duties that can drain the bandwidth of the powerful Cortex-M4 core. Additionally, NXP's unique configurable peripherals—such as the State Configurable Timer and Serial GPIO—can also offload processor bandwidth while providing maximum I/O flexibility to the developer. Five Things You Don't Know about DACs On-Demand This webcast reveals the secrets behind selecting the best DAC product for your application. Revealed within are the technical details behind five of the key specification areas of Precision Digital to Analog Converters (DAC). Topics reviewed are Resolution and Accuracy, Total Unadjusted Error, Output Noise, Output Timing and finally System Level Application considerations. These five areas are featured on most DAC Datasheets but often their relevance in real world applications is misunderstood. Participants will emerge from this webcast with a deeper understanding of DACs and how their specifications can impact system level performance. Power Architecture Solutions for Industrial Control On-Demand We are surrounded by industrial control equipment that treats our drinking water, generates and distributes electricity, controls HVAC and elevators in buildings, keeps the trains on schedule, builds our cars and favorite electronic gadgets, and more. Freescale Power Architecture has been used to control and interconnect these devices for more than 20 years. Come hear about why leading customers select and trust our processors to control such critical infrastructure equipment. Zynq-7000 EPP: Where ARM Processors Meet Hardware Programmability On-Demand In March 2011, Xilinx unveiled the details of the Zynq™-7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP), a new category of product that tightly integrates a complete ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ processor-based system with 28nm, low-power programmable logic for system architects and embedded software developers to extend, customize, optimize and differentiate their systems. As the industry's first extensible processing platform Zynq-7000 EPP was developed to achieve the levels of processing and compute performance required in embedded applications targeting markets such as video surveillance, automotive driver assistance, factory automation, wireless communications and many others. This second Zynq-7000 EPP webcast will provide the latest information on Zynq-7000 solutions including additional architectural details and an update on the rapidly expanding Zynq-7000 EPP ecosystem and infrastructure. DesignNews Editorial Webcast: Beyond The Grid: Harvesting Renewable Energy For Electronic Products On-Demand Instead of looking at renewable energy as a contributor to the country's electrical grid, this Design News webcast will examine it as a direct source for products ranging from cell phones to light switches to sensors. Steve Grady from Cymbet Corp. and Chris Link from Texas Instruments will discuss how solar and other forms of energy can be used to power devices that don't necessarily need an AC source or a battery. DesignNews Editorial Webcast: Motion Solutions for Aerospace and Defense On-Demand As a companion to the "Mechatronics Special Report" from Design News, this Webcast explores the most intriguing trends, technologies and applications of mechatronics in the aerospace and defense industries. Virtualization for Practical Embedded Applications On-Demand Virtualization is rapidly becoming one of the key enablers of security, critical path isolation and device consolidation in embedded computing environments. Increasingly more and more functionality is being required from embedded systems without compromising deterministic real-time requirements. Explore how Intel hardware assisted virtualization technology (Intel® VT) is making such demanding embedded applications possible. Example use cases include: legacy OS consolidation, trusted/open application integration, RTOS/GPOS consolidation, performance-critical application separation and OS/soft failover. Embedded Intel Atom Platforms: An Introduction On-Demand This webinar is for embedded design engineers who want to find out more about the Intel® Atom™ processor family. It will focus on the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series and highlight the differences and similarities between this embedded processor and the various Intel® Atom™ processors available for the netbook, tablet PC and digital home markets. The start of the course will comprise of an overview of the embedded Intel® Atom™ processor offerings with specific cases of where customers have used these processors in their applications and will close with a demonstration of some of the features available on edc.intel.com website. Design considerations for Intel Atom processor E6xx new B-1 stepping-based platform On-Demand This webinar covers the design recommendations for the latest Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx B-1 stepping-based platform. Details of the enhancements in B1 associated with board, BIOS and driver change will be provided as well. All embedded developers and product/program managers who would like to find out the next level detail of the Intel Atom processor E6xx series are highly encouraged to participate in this webinar. Designing Embedded Intelligent Devices Powered by the Next Generation Intel Atom Processor-Based Platform On-Demand The next generation Intel® Atom™ processor-based platform (codenamed Cedar Trail) offers the flexibility to design many embedded intelligent devices. This session provides key features of the hardware and software components of this platform. With multiple product offerings, the platform can scale in power as well as performance to fit the needs of various market segments. The next generation Intel Atom processor (codenamed Cedar View) offers rich graphics display configurations and media opening the door to innovative portable retail devices and entry digital signs.

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Static Analysis versus Dynamic Analysis

Paul Andersen from GrammaTech (the company that develop CodeSonar) share his thought on using both, static and dynamic analysis, to detect vulnerabilities. (read the articles here)

Lots of comments given which share the same thought as me. However, if I were to choose one, I'll definitely use static analysis. As I'm doing research in that area, I do found that we can remove all vulnerabilities related to C overflows at the beginning without using dynamic analysis. Of course there are pros and cons of using dynamic analysis, but the major issue with dynamic analysis which make me choose static analysis instead of dynamic is that the cost of re-write the code of modified the code is higher after the development phase and it can introduce unknown error too.

However, if a company can afford to use both, then I do recommend to use both. BUT, it is hard to choose the tool as all companies claimed their tool have better detection rate.

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Making your application code multicore ready

In this product how-to article, Vector Fabrics’ Paul Stavers describes a more efficient way to parallelize code for embedded multicore designs illustrating the process using the company’s online tool to parallelize Google’s VP8 video decoder... [read more]

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Energy efficient C code for ARM devices

An interesting articles by Chris Shore which appeared in ARM Tech. Conference. Check it out here

My thought:
I'm more interested on how you improve securities in ARM devices and at the same time maintain or did not causes any harm to the devices efficiencies especially current era where attacks can be directed or coming from a small devices such as wireless sensor.

There will always a debate on security versus performance and you can only have one to choose. However, I would love to see something that be able to work in parallel for both security and performance :)

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Clearing up the mesh about wireless networking topologies: Part 2

Having covered the basics of wireless networking in Part 1, as well as the criteria for evaluating the various topologies, it is now time to look closely at five different network architectures - point-to-multipoint, Zigbee 2007, Wireless Hart, 6LoWPAN, and on-demand distance vector routing - and assess their strengths and limitations [read more].

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Securing SoC Platform Oriented Architectures with a hardware Root of Trust

While it has long been the purview of electronic product vendors to rise to the challenges of managing ever shortening product life cycles, a new trend is afoot that may turn the tables in favor of longer platform hardware life cycles.

As embedded programmable processor based features increase in power, increasingly sophisticated platform System on Chip (SoC) architectures, including configurable hardware, boot code, firmware, and system software now bring to systems the ability to modify basic hardware functions and features without redesigning the SoC from scratch [read more].

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Adopting C programming conventions

Do C has programming conventions? Do embedded C has? I do think that C has programming convention that has been adopted years ago. But why the author wrote this articles? Is he trying to introduce another programming convention? or just discussing? Check it out here.

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Seventeen steps to safer C code

Thomas Honold had share his view in having a safe C applications. He listed out 17 steps and discuss briefly with sample all the steps [Article].

It is a good article, but there is nothing new in this except its implementation in an embedded environment. The steps was known since late 90s after chaotic event caused by insecure C applications. The issues here is not the steps or C, but the mentality of developer/programmers whom ignore security implementation for the sake of speed in processing or faster development. This is something need to be changed.

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Why your embedded controller may not need a CPU?

In most microcontroller architectures, a "smart" CPU is surrounded by a set of relatively "dumb" peripherals. The peripherals have limited functions; usually they just convert data from one form to another. For example, an I2C peripheral basically converts data between serial and parallel formats, while an ADC converts signals between analog and digital. The CPU has to perform all of the work to process the data and actually do something useful with it. This, plus close management of the peripherals, can result in a lot of complexity in the CPU's firmware and may require a fast and powerful CPU to execute that firmware within real-time timing constraints. This in turn can lead to more obscure bugs and thus to more complex and expensive debugging equipment, and so on.
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by Mark Ainsworth, Cypress Semiconductor @ EETimes

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Integration, Testing and Debugging of C Code Together with UML-Generated Sources

It will soon no longer be possible to master the growing complexity of software without the use of CASE tools. UML (Universal Modeling Language), in particular, has enabled the uniform design of modular software components, including automatic code generation, which prevents common coding errors right from the start. Though many companies shy away from the perceived effort required for the changeover to these new techniques, existing C code can in fact be transferred to a UML model element with very few, if any, changes. Future extensions can then be written as UML models, generated, and integrated with the "old" C code. As a result, a smooth and easy transition from C to UML is possible.
This paper outlines a step-by-step approach for importation of existing software into a modern and innovative CASE tool. It introduces the integration of the Lauterbach and Telelogic tools TRACE32 and Rhapsody, which make the process as smooth as possible and help maintain high levels of software quality.
Read more @ EETimes Online

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