Programming Category - Page 38 of 43 - CNX Software

August 17, 2011July 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ARM TechCon 2011: Software & System Design Schedule

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2011 will be hosted in Santa Clara on the 25-27 October 2011. There will be many events and classes related to Chip Design and Software & System Design. The Software & System Design events will take place on the 26th and 27th October 2011. Here’s the schedule for Software & System Design events for the 26th of October: Time Class Track 11 am The 2012 Compute Subsystem Creating Smarter Systems 11 am Practical Cortex Debugging: Serial Wire Viewer and ETM Tracing Developing/Debugging 11 am Integrating a CMOS Imaging Sensor into an ARM-Based Embedded Application Human Interface Design 11 am Embedded IPv6 – Now is the time Networking & Connectivity 11 am RSA & AES Libraries protected against side-channel attacks Safety & Security 11 am Introduction to the ARM Architecture The Fundamentals of ARM 12 pm Optimizing SoC development through a common design foundation Creating Smarter Systems […]

August 16, 2011August 16, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

New Revision of C++ Programming Language: C++11

The Final International Draft standard (FCD) was unanimously approved on August 12th, 2011. The standard should be published this year. The draft name of the standard is C++0x, but since it will be published this year, it should probably renamed C++11, and if there are delays in its publication it could well be renamed to C++12. You can download the 1334 pages “Working Draft, Standard for Programming Language C++” to get the full details. If you don’t feel like going thru that massive document, but still want to learn about C++0x, I recommend you check the C++0x FAQ on Bjarne Stroustrup (The creator of C++) homepage. Here are some the new features and improvements: initializer-lists – Initializer lists are not just for arrays any more uniform initialization syntax and semantics template aliases (previously know as template typedef) rvalue references defaulted and deleted functions variadic templates auto – deduction of a type from […]

August 12, 2011August 12, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

HTC Releases OpenSense SDK

HTC recently released OpenSense SDK, a framework encompassing all available HTC SDKs as well as features that will be offered in the future for HTC Sense user interface. Supported features include: Common Controls API: UI widgets and components that will provide developers with the ability to provide the Sense UI look and feel to their applications. Stereoscopic 3D (S3D) API: API documentation and sample code that illustrates how to programmatically enable the 3D display mode of the parallel barrier based screen for various types of applications. This API is provided as part of the phone add-on extension to the Android SDK. Tablet Pen API: API documentation and sample code for providing a framework for fully fledged drawing and painting applications as well as full access to the pen events at a low level. This API is provided as part of the tablet add-on extension to the Android SDK. API documentation […]

August 10, 2011July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Fix “Static Random Posts Widget” WordPress Plugin Page Not Found (404) Error

If you are using the latest version of Static Random Posts Widget (Version 1.1) an HTTP Error 404 (Page not found) will be generated although the plugin works fine. The 404 error may slightly delay your page load, you can check if you have the issue with PageSpeed Online. If you have such issue “Avoid bad requests” should appear in the results with the faulty link to http://yourblog.com/wp-content/plugins/static-random-posts/js/static-random-posts.js?ver=1 The reason for the error is the plugin is actually installed in plugins/static-random-posts-widget. To fix the issue, edit ./wp-content/plugins/static-random-posts-widget/static-random-posts.php and look for path declarations with static-random-posts and change it to static-random-posts-widget. Alternatively, you can download static-random-posts.php.bz2 I modified and uncompress it to replace static-random-posts.php. Please backup your file first. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in […]

April 29, 2011August 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Yocto Project: Build Your Own Custom Embedded Kernel Image

The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture. The first official release (Yocto Project 1.0) has been made available on the 6th of April 2011. Yocto Project Overview See this short video presentation of the Yocto Project which explains its goals. It’s a complete embedded Linux development environment with tools, metadata, and documentation – everything you need such as emulation environments, debuggers, an Application Toolkit Generator, etc… It is not a new build system however such as buildroot, instead it relies on the Poky build tools that provide an open source development environment targeting the ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and x86 architectures. Here’s what the Yocto Project provides: A recent Linux kernel along with a set of system commands and libraries suitable for the embedded environment. System components such […]

April 28, 2011February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Qualcomm Officially Releases its Augmented Reality SDK

Qualcomm has just released the official release of their Augmented Reality SDK with Unity 3.0 Support: Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced the immediate commercial availability of its Augmented Reality (AR) Platform for Android smartphones. Offered through Qualcomm’s online developer network, this 1.0 release marks the successful completion of the Company’s beta program. Developers can now build, market and commercially distribute applications based on the Qualcomm AR platform. … The platform supports multiple development environments. The Qualcomm AR Android SDK supports native Android development with the Android tool chain, including the Android SDK and NDK. The Qualcomm AR Unity Extension supports rapid development with the Unity 3 game development tool. A web application is also included for creating and managing image resources that can be used with either development environment. You may have check out the complete QCAR SDK Press Release. You can download the the latest Qualcomm SDK and […]

April 22, 2011April 22, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Compile with ARM Thumb2 to Reduce Memory Footprint and Improve Performance

ARM claims that Thumb-2 instructions (for ARM Cortex cores and all ARMv7 processors) provides performance improvements and code size optimization: Thumb-2 technology is the instruction set underlying the ARM Cortex architecture which provides enhanced levels of performance, energy efficiency, and code density for a wide range of embedded applications. For performance optimized code Thumb-2 technology uses 31 percent less memory to reduce system cost, while providing up to 38 percent higher performance than existing high density code, which can be used to prolong battery-life or to enrich the product feature set. Thumb-2 technology is featured in the processor, and in all ARMv7 architecture-based processors. Dave Martin (Linaro) has recently posted a message entitled “ARM/Thumb-2 kernel size comparison” on Linaro mailing list:

The question of the size impact of building the kernel in Thumb-2 came
up to day, so I extracted some quick numbers:

$ size vmlinux-*
text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
8420507	 463356	 826928	9710791	 942cc7	vmlinux-arm
6715539	 463260	 826928	8005727	 7a285f	vmlinux-thumb2

This is for a recent mainline kernel built with the linaro omap config.

In this case we save about 20% for code and read-only data (i.e.,
text) and 17.5% overall -- which accounts for a little under 2MB saved
in this example.

This doesn't take loadable modules into account; we can probably expect
to see a similar size ratio there.

The question of the size impact of building the kernel in Thumb-2 came

up to day, so I extracted some quick numbers:

$ size vmlinux-*

text data bss dec hex filename

8420507 463356 826928 9710791 942cc7 vmlinux-arm

6715539 463260 826928 8005727 7a285f vmlinux-thumb2

This is for a recent mainline kernel built with the linaro omap config.

In this case we save about 20% for code and read-only data (i.e.,

text) and 17.5% overall -- which accounts for a little under 2MB saved

in this example.

This doesn't take loadable modules into account; we can probably expect

to see a similar size ratio there.

The results provided by Linaro at not as high as those claimed by ARM, but a 20% code size reduction is still impressive. If you want to use Thumb2 to compile […]

April 19, 2011April 19, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Embedded Linux Quick Start / Tutorial Videos

Free Electrons recorded some videos from the Embedded Linux Conference Europe, in Cambrigde, United Kingdom on October 2010 by Chris Simmonds, the founder of 2net Limited, a UK company providing training, consultancy and custom software for Linux and other embedded platforms. The videos can either be downloaded in webm HD format at http://free-electrons.com/blog/elce-2010-tutorial-videos/ or you can watch them in HD format below. The PDF slides for the three parts and the lab notes are available at http://elinux.org/images/c/cc/Linux-quick-start.tar.gz The first video (53 minutes) deals with the following key points: Genesis of a Linux project The four elements: Tool chain; boot loader; kernel; user space Element 1: Tool chain Element 2: Boot loader The second video (1h19m) focuses on: Third element: Kernel Fourth element: User space The last video (1h07m) is more practical as it shows how to use embedded Linux on an NXP LPC3250 Stick (ARM9): Description of the hardware Installing […]