FPGA Central

Embedded Technology Journal Update


a techfocus media publication :: April 14, 2009 :: volume XV, no. 02









FROM THE EDITOR



When you are doing work around the house, do you go down to the store to get the exact tool for the task, or do you use what you already have in the toolbox, risking compromising the result? Dick Selwood has been browsing the new tool display at the Ada store.



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Jim Turley – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal









EVENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS











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LATEST NEWS



April 14, 2009



MontaVista Announces Support for Cavium Networks OCTEON(TM) II Multicore MIPS64 Processor



D2 Technologies’ Embedded vPort VoIP Solution to Support Cavium Networks’ OCTEON™ II Multi-Core MIPS64 Processor



High-Performance MIPS64® Architecture Drives Cavium Networks' New OCTEON™ II Processors



eSOL Accelerates Automotive Application Development by Supporting Fujitsu MB86R01 LSI for Car Navigation and Digital Instrument Clusters



April 13, 2009



Advantech’s Latest Atom Computer On Module



Sarnoff to Demo Acadia® II Vision Processor at SPIE DSS



April 10, 2009



Insyde® Software Announces Quick-to-Launch Technology to Complement Third-Party Instant-On Solutions



April 9, 2009



INCODIO and SCALE-RT – new tools for automotive Software-in-the-Loop applications



eSOL Expands Its eCROS Integrated Software Platform Solutions to Texas Instruments' New TMS320DM365 Digital Media Processor



April 8, 2009



RMI Announces Next Generation Multi-Core Processor Architecture and Product Family Developed on 40nm Process With Frequencies Greater Than 2.0 GHz



Nuance Communications Announces Continued Adoption for New Mobile Care Solution



Iluminated Rotary encoders from knitter-switch offer new options for Pro-Audio and Industrial Control



CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES



Fitting the Tool to the Job
(Dick Selwood)
The Twitter of Things?
Developments in Embedded WiFi
(Bryon Moyer)
Like Flash, But Different
(Jim Turley)
Safe, Secure, and ARMed
(Jim Turley)
15 Billion Nodes, and 8 Bits
(Dick Selwood)
Playing “What If…” With Multicore Processors
(Jim Turley)
Scopes
Much More than Just a Wriggly Line
(Dick Selwood)



JOURNAL WEBCASTS



CHALK TALK From Desktop to Target: What You Need From A Development Suite. Is embedded software development and debug a challenge for your team? Join Amelia Dalton as she chats with Jit Sivalogan of Mentor Graphics about setting up a productive environment for embedded development. (Mentor Graphics)

CHALK TALK Simplified Verification of DSP Algorithms in Hardware. Moving algorithms from MATLAB to FPGAs? Join Amelia Dalton as she explores options for verifying DSP designs implemented in FPGAs with Tim Vanevenhoven from Xilinx. (Xilinx)

CHALK TALK Using Embedded Hypervisors in Mobile Devices. Join Amelia Dalton as she explores the use of embedded hypervisors to create safe and secure software for mobile devices with Rob McCammon of Open Kernel Labs. (Open Kernel Labs)

CHALK TALK Embedded Networking With MicroBlaze and Spartan-3A FPGAs. Join Amelia Dalton as she works her way to "Hello World" on an FPGA-based embedded system with Xilinx Spartan-3A and MicroBlaze. (Xilinx)



[click here for more webcasts]











Fitting the Tool to the Job
(Dick Selwood)

Names are strange, and programming language names can be even stranger. Given the thousands of languages that exist, it is inevitable that there are some strange ones out there. ENGLISH was a good name for what turned out to be a non-runner, and “The Last One” was a click-and-point code-generator, generating BASIC (one of the last of the acronym language names.) I have a weakness for the wacky - Python, for example was named after Monty Python’s Flying Circus – but also like the elegance of naming a language after a pioneer. occam was named after a fourteenth century philosopher, and while we still wait for a language called Grace or Hopper, the homage to Ada, Countess Lovelace, is still pleasing.  By coincidence the 2009 Ada Conference UK was on Ada Lovelace Day (March 24th) – a day that celebrates women in technology and aims to encourage more women to enter tech! nological roles. This seemed a good opportunity to look at some of the latest developments in Ada.

Developments?  Isn’t Ada an old fashioned failure? Didn’t it more or less die when the US Department of Defense, which commissioned it in the first place, decided to abandon its mandatory use?  Well, no. Ada is still in use for safety- and mission-critical systems, particularly for large systems. To be fair, there are reasons for people to be a little dubious about Ada. The first attempts by DoD and other defence organisations around the world to bulldoze through the use of Ada, while succeeding to the extent that it dramatically reduced the number of languages in use on defence projects, was premature. The development tools were not in place:  in particular, the compilers were not ready. Since one of Ada’s strengths is the checking functions built into the compiler, this was a major drawback. There was also the issue of persuading programmers that it was worth their while t! o learn the language. [more]










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