Read more: VxWorks helping commercial spaceflight become a reality – VxWorks.

The new front in cyber warfare: embedded systems – VxWorks.

I’ve mostly stayed away from the Agile, Scrum, and XP debate since I’m not in that business anymore. I’ve always felt that this was invented before (we taught this at Rational as iterative and incremental development) and that there a lot of hype. This article points out some of these pitfalls, in particular the people who claim to be experts in the field.

VxWorks at the Intel Developer Forum 2010 – VxWorks.

Our customer, Huawei, recently announced they have been chosen to deploy Australia’s first LTE network. This is great news because Huawei’s LTE base stations are built using VxWorks – the VxWorks Platform for Networking Equipment to be exact. It’s also great news because we are starting to see the fruits of our customers’ efforts come to reality and it stands as a validation of our investment in next generation networks. Moreover, this is the latest in a set of successes we’ve had with VxWorks in the networking space.

VxWorks helping to bring LTE Down Under – Bill Graham.

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For embedded software companies where so much emphasis is given to supported hardware, operating systems and middleware technologies, tools can get ignored in the fray. This is unfortunate because tools are key to project success because they can make the difference between meeting a deadline or missing it by many weeks. Tools are all about developer productivity and getting problems solved faster …The Multicore transition: tools are key to success – Bill Graham.

Image from www.life123.com

In embedded systems and likely in other markets, the need to go “green” will come from customer demand for reduced power consumption rather corporate citizenship. This might be stating the obvious in that, of course, companies are far more motivated by money or costs than by the need to protect the environment. However, in embedded systems the move to lower power consumption is becoming a more universal concern than one specific to mobile or other battery-powered devices.

Power management has traditionally been the concern for devices that needed to have good battery life. In fact, battery life for mobile devices can be a differentiator in the marketplace. We all hate when our mobile phone runs out of power just when we want to phone home.

Power management and system power consumption are becoming more a general problem in embedded systems. Certainly, power consumption because of thermal concerns has always been a system design problem but how much electricity consumed by a system has been less so. Consider the mobile phone network infrastructure. There is huge computing power put in every base station and they consume a huge amount of power. It’s estimated that mobile networks worldwide consume 43 billion KW/h per year (roughly 2W per user). Assuming residential power rates here in Ontario ($0.08/KW/h) that is $3.4 billion per year. Power consumption in the mobile networks will become a big focus as electricity rates climb. The motivation will be mostly to reduce costs but the side benefit will be reduced electricity consumption. Companies can then claim they are going green and look good while saving money at the same time. A win-win situation.

On the technical side, what will enable this? Already we are seeing higher computing power with lower  TDP in multicore processors and supporting chipsets. This trend will continue as the customer demand for lower power intensifies. Unfortunately, the software side is behind the curve in this respect. In general, embedded RTOSs have poor support for power management. This need to change quickly to enable the power saving capabilities in the processors. Once the hardware and software capability is there, I think we’ll see an increasing use of power management in the non-traditional markets.