2012 Embedded Market Study – Software Development & Processors

I’ve just come across an Embedded System Study by UBM published in April 2012. The company surveyed over 1,700 professionals working on embedded systems who are mainly based in the US (56%),  but also in Europe (21%) and Asia (12%). The report is 87 long, but I found some of the slides are particularly interesting in regards to programming languages, operating systems and software life cycle, as well as processor/micro-controller choices. Unsurprisingly C (65%), C++ (20%) and assembler (5%) are still the main languages used for embedded software development. In this report, we also learn that the average team is composed of 14.5 members including 5.6 software engineers, 5.6 hardware engineers and 3.3 firmware engineers. 2012 was the first year they included QA Engineers and system integrators both with 2.6 members on average working on projects lasting from less than 6 months to over 25 months. UBM survey also provides a […]

Booting Userspace in Less Than 1 Second with Systemd – ELCE 2011

Koen Kooi, the lead developer of the Angstrom distribution, introduces systemd (sysvinit replacement) and shows how it can be integrated to a specific platform at Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011. Abstract: Systemd is currently being hyped as *the* sysvinit replacement and this presentation will show why it’s here to stay. A brief introduction to systemd is given but the main focus is on showing how to integrate it into your favourite platform and how a few hours of tweaking can boot userspace into X11 in less than 1 second on the current generation of ARM chips (OMAP4 on Pandaboard). A comparison with slower low-end ARM chips is also be included and some design considerations when designing those low-end systems. The audience is system integrators and hobbyists that require a fast boot (e.g. robotics people). You can also download the presentation slides. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as […]

BeagleBone: New 89 USD Beagleboard

The BeagleBone is a low-cost, high-expansion hardware-hacker focused BeagleBoard. It is a bare-bones BeagleBoard that acts as a USB or Ethernet connected expansion companion for your current BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard-xM or works stand-alone. The BeagleBone is smaller than the previous version of BeagleBoards (looks like the business of a credit card) and features TI Sitara™ AM3358 Cortex A8 processor clocked at 700Mhz. The BeagleBone is also able to run a full-featured Linux. Here are the current hardware specifications: TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8 @ 700 MHz 256 MB DDR2 RAM Board size: 3.4″ x 2.1″ Shipped with 2GB microSD card with the Angstrom Distribution with node.js and Cloud9 IDE Single cable development environment with built-in FTDI-based serial/JTAG and on-board hub to give the same cable simultaneous access to a USB device port on the target processor Industry standard 3.3V I/Os on the expansion headers with easy-to-use 0.1″ spacing On-chip Ethernet, not […]

Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011

Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC-E 2011) will take place on October 26 – 28, 2011 at Clarion Congress Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. The event will be co-located with LinuxCon Europe 2011 and GStreamer Conference. The day before the official opening of the conference, two tutorials will be offered on Tuesday 25th of October:b Outside the Box: An Introduction to Embedded Linux and Hardware Interfacing Using the Snowball Board – 9:00 – 17:00 – Trainer: Chris Simmonds – Cost: 350 USD. Embedded Android Workshop – 9:00 – 17:00 – Trainer: Karim Yaghmour- Cost: 300 USD. ELCE consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting. October 26 10:45 – 11:45 – Linaro’s Android Platform by Zach Pfeffer, Linaro Android Platform team leader. Linaro uses components from the Android Open Source […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC