Software & Tools Resources

Developers working with LiPPERT's Advanced COM module CoreExpress-ECO, now get complete QNX Neutrino software support with a full-fledged BSP.

The BSP for QNX Neutrino, jointly developed with QNX Software Systems, features support for FASTboot IPL. Systems with this capability boot up very quickly; it takes less than 5 seconds from power on until the graphical application is up and running.

Many devices utilizing embedded PCs take advantage of this behaviour. "The fast and efficient QNX operating system, paired with the smallest and most performing embedded solution are the perfect start to take on any project that you might want to realize.", says Kroy Zeviar of QNX Software Systems.

The BSP covers all functions of the CoreExpress-ECO. This includes 1280x800 graphics output on LVDS, audio, Ethernet, serial interfaces, USB, and SD card support. Full documentation, describing installation and operation with various IDE devices is included.

This QNX IPL boot loader replaces the otherwise used BIOS and takes care of the entire initialization of all the CoreExpress-ECO evaluation kit's peripherals. The application software can be started with QNX 6.4.0 from any bootable device, like IDE or USB disk.

By clicking the link below, you can watch the FASTboot IPL presentation on LiPPERT's CoreExpress-ECO module at the Embedded World 2009 in Nuremberg.

QNX Fastboot - EWC2009

New low power x86 Silicon is now available, so Windows Embedded Standard (WES) properly configured can be productively employed for battery powered devices.  But true mobile embedded devices are like laptops and netbooks in important ways.  This whitepaper explains some of the differences.

The challenge for embedded developers is identifying and extracting parallelism within serially designed applications and designing software so that it scales as the number of cores increases. Last fall we published a white paper that discusses the combined performance and SMP capabilities of the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture and Wind River® VxWorks® SMP operating system and walks through SMP software design considerations, methodologies, and Wind River tools that help with each step of the Multi-Core software development cycle. Don't miss this paper if you're considering adoption of SMP using VxWorks and Intel Multi-core processors.

Webinar recording: Operating Systems for Medium- and High-Assurance Systems

Increased security requirements are becoming more widespread across different applications and embedded products, from high-security military applications to mobile and consumer products, and even automotive designs connecting to the outside world.

As the requirements for secure systems increase, it is clear that traditional operating systems are not well suited to keep up with these demands. Desktop operating systems have been traditionally weak at defending against security threats and embedded operating systems have typically ignored security entirely.

New technologies such as medium- and high-assurance operating systems provide foundation components to build secure systems and provide cost effective alternatives to traditional hardware separation. Separation kernels facilitate building high-assurance systems based on MILS architectures. Adding secure hypervisor capabilities to a separation kernel allows preservation of investment in legacy systems by allowing multiple "guest" operating systems and applications to run atop the separation kernel. The use of virtualization technology and SMP makes the performance of these new systems comparable or superior to systems built in the last few years.

This presentation includes a brief introduction to MILS and explains LynuxWorks approach to both medium- and high-assurance systems and the benefits of LynuxWorks solution.

Building high-performance secure systems using the latest virtualization technologies. With security requirements from military applications to mobile, medical and consumer products
increasing, this series will demonstrate how to realize secure power-efficient COTS-based multicore systems at high performance speeds and dramatically reduced costs.

LynuxWorks will demonstrate its LynxSecure MILS separation kernel and
embedded hypervisor, including a fully virtualized Windows(R) guest OS, on
the latest processor architectures from Intel.

Are you considering suitable digital signal processors for your applications? Read the article " Digital Signal Processing on Intel® Architecture"" to understand why DSP engineers are considering Intel® multi-core processors for embedded digital signal processing (DSP) applications. Advances in power-efficient transistor technology, optimized multi-core processor microarchitectures and the evolution of Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions (Intel® SSE) for vector processing have combined to produce favorable GFLOPS/watt and GFLOPS/size ratios. The article discusses how these techniques were used to implement and benchmark performance of medical ultrasound, wireless infrastructure, and advanced radar processing algorithms on a variety of current Intel processors."     

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Complex math is at the heart of many of the biggest technical challenges facing  today's engineers. With embedded multi-core processors, the type of calculations that would have traditionally required a supercomputer can now be performed at lower power in a real-time, embedded environment. The article A Real-Time HPC Approach for Optimizing Intel® Multi-Core Processor-based Architectures provides an overview on how a novel approach with Intel hardware and software technology is allowing for real-time high-performance computing (HPC) in order to solve engineering problems with multi-core processors that were not possible only five years ago. Also included in this article are some industry examples.

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So you have heard it all as far as virtualization is concerned, I would definitely recommend this article Methods and Applications of System Virtualization using Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) even for the most savvy of virtualization experts as it explains how hardware assisted Intel VT technology enables different deployments. This article also discusses emerging opportunities for virtualization usage in embedded applications such as In-vehicle infotainment and next generation mobile internet devices.

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For BIOS developers, field technicians and quality assurance the POST Checkpoints are like the diagnostic codes used in today's automotive computers. When the "check engine light" comes on, customers expect a mechanic to read the engine code and diagnose the problem ... checkpoints expose the same feature in the BIOS, providing debug information before the OS boots.

The current method of using a PCI card to display checkpoints has a number of limitations, since the industry is moving from PCI to serial bus standards. Embedded platforms, netbooks and other small form factor systems need a debug solution that doesn't rely on opening the case or inserting a PCI card.

This white paper describes how AMI simplifies BIOS debugging using AMI Debug Rx and other innovative USB-based debug solutions.

New IA customers have a whole new world of firmware options to consider. This video from AMI explains BIOS & UEFI for embedded Intel Architecture solutions.

Platform Firmware Solutions for Intel Embedded and Communications Products

This video discusses the advantages of BIOS & UEFI on Embedded IA products versus boot-loader firmware used for non-IA processor architectures.

Copyright 2009 American Megatrends, Inc.

http://www.ami.com/tv

There is no doubt the emergence of commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware platforms, Carrier Grade Linux, and management middleware have had a significant impact on the market for next generation network equipment. By enabling Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) to readily assemble best of breed COTS components, a ‘jumpstart’ on the development of new Network Elements can be realized. But having standardized COTS building blocks is only a part of the puzzle.