Low-cost, portable, and widely available medical monitoring devices promise to transform the health care industry. This equipment evolution depends on component manufacturers and embedded designers that can compress multiple measurement strategies into a low-power, small form factor patien...
Along with every other portion of the embedded landscape, USB peripherals now require higher-speed interfaces to handle the escalating data rates and increased video content. As a result, Renesas Electronics Corporation recently introduced two new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0)...
When embedded designers encounter high-level technical computing applications that require algorithm development or data analysis, they often turn to MATLAB from MathWorks to perform matrix-based engineering calculations without actually writing a program. However, for integration into the...
As each new embedded project comes along, designers are expected to not only package all of the new functionality into a smaller physical size but also to increase performance and power efficiency. With these expectations in mind, Kontron recently announced a new 2.5-inch, low-power Pico-I...
Maintaining stable and reliable device interconnections in a noisy, industrial factory environment is a challenging task for embedded designers. To standardize these connections, the IO-Link Consortium developed a specification for a field-level, point-to-point connection system between a...
With multicore architecture now becoming a standard part of high-performance embedded systems, designers find that they can lower costs and reduce the component count by combining multiple applications into a single hardware and software development project. Using virtualization technology...
Although some embedded standards now push communications data rates into the multi-gigahertz range, many industrial automation, retail, test systems, and defense applications still rely on RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485 serial data links. To combine this technology with the latest PCI Express...
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As embedded performance requirements continue to soar, designers must find ways to increase the raw computing power of their systems to satisfy the needs of demanding applications such as high-definition medical imagery or complex radar signal analysis. Supporting the transition to improve...
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When designers undertake applications with extreme space limitations, such as wireless sensing nodes, home automation systems, and portable health and fitness products, package size becomes a critical component selection factor. Extending its EFM32 Gecko range of microcontrollers to meet t...
Smartphone technology has become commonplace with the general public, and customers expect similar performance and touch-screen interaction features with all of their electronic devices. Supporting the certification of the human interface portion of embedded design, Renesas Electronics Ame...
With the performance and portability requirements of critical applications in markets such as industrial automation, embedded vision, video surveillance, and medical imaging on the rise, embedded designers are looking for low-power, cost-optimized components. With these applications in min...
Built with contributions from hundreds of software experts, the Linux operating system has captured the attention of embedded developers worldwide and is available in commercial distributions throughout the embedded market. To help eliminate the requirement to match a specific Linux config...
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications is a growing trend in embedded design and promises to transform connectivity and remote management across many market segments, including industrial, transportation, health care, utilities, retail, and consumer electronics. Offering designers lower d...
Software projects continue to grow in size and complexity, making it extremely difficult for developers to test and analyze the relationships between elements of the source code. At this year’s Design West conference, GrammaTech introduced a new software architecture visualization sy...
With each new project, embedded developers are often challenged to enhance software execution speed and reduce overall code size with fewer resources and a shorter schedule. Offering support for all of their PIC microcontrollers and dsPIC Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs), Microchip Techno...
As intelligent embedded devices become ubiquitous, designers are searching for small, low-power techniques to provide continuous, autonomous connectivity and effective remote management. To meet this growing demand, Logic PD recently introduced a small form factor, low-power System-On-Modu...
Microchip Technology announced the MCP2210 protocol converter for adding USB Certified connectivity to Serial Pe-ripheral Interface (SPI)-based systems. The converter utilizes the USB human interface design class, which is supported by Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems and is 100 p...
With a focus on low-power, handheld/portable embedded ap-plications, Advantech recently announced the SOM-7565 COM Express module powered by the new Cedar Trail archi-tecture from Intel. Cedar Trail, which is based on the latest Intel Atom processors plus the Intel NM10 Express chipset, of...
Texas Instruments (TI) recently unveiled the SimpleLink product family of wireless connectivity technologies for low-power, low-cost embedded applications. The most noticeable product is the SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3000, a self-contained 802.11 network processor that enables designers to add Wi...
Embedded applications in the consumer, industrial, and medical markets such as sensor, signal conditioning, and instrumentation that require low noise, low-voltage operation, high precision, and low drift can benefit from the performance and features of the new MCP6V2X family of operationa...
With microcontroller manufacturers integrating more and more features and functions into each new generation, users are finding it difficult to adapt existing development hardware to match the changes. In support of these users, IAR Systems has delivered a complete starter kit for the new...
As embedded devices in multiple industries become universally connected and grow in complexity, users expect a sophisticated, interactive interface with high-end, real-time graphics capabilities. To meet these demands, Wind River released an update to its commercial embedded Linux runtime...
With smartphones and tablets leading the way, consumers now expect touch-screen interfaces
on most new portable embedded products. With high-volume consumer applications such as GPS,
gaming consoles, and digital still cameras in mind, Atmel released the Atmel maXTouch mXT112E
controller op...
With microcontroller manufacturers integrating more and more features and functions into each new generation, users are finding it difficult to adapt existing development hardware to match the changes. In support of these users, IAR Systems has delivered a complete starter kit for the new...
Medical and industrial applications such as gas sampling/collection, respiration screening, and blood analysis systems that monitor and control pneumatic flow are among the specialized embedded projects that require accurate pressure sensors. For these applications, Honeywell introduced a...
The next generation of computing architecture destined for embedded designs includes high-speed serial protocols such as USB 3.0 at 5.0 Gbps, DisplayPort 1.2 at 5.4 Gbps, and PCI Express 3.0 at 8.0 Gbps. These new protocols will bring significant performance improvements such as 3840 x 216...
As embedded designers start each new project, they face the potential challenge of matching the latest high-performance computing devices with legacy peripherals. Targeting these challenges, Integrated Device Technology (IDT) recently announced a protocol-conversion bridge allowing designe...
Supporting embedded applications that require safety certifications in medical, industrial, and transportation applications, Texas Instruments introduced the new Hercules safety microcontroller platform in early September. The platform consists of three ARM Cortex-based microcontroller fam...
Digital signage, infotainment systems, and multimedia sales kiosks are examples of projects that require designers to package control functionality into a small form factor, reduced-power embedded device that supports HD video displays. With these applications in mind, Kontron recently ann...
Coming as a relief to portable device manufacturers wanting to eliminate that nightly plug-in ritual of recharging batteries, Texas Instruments (TI) announced its next generation of wireless power technology, the bq51013 wireless power receiver. The new receiver performs all three function...
The new ZigBee RF4CE technology specifies a low-data-rate, ultra-low-power wireless network for consumer electronics applications, while ZigBee PRO includes an expanded feature set for application profiles such as automatic meter reading, commercial building automation, and home automation...
As multicore technology invades the embedded space, development tools vendors are updating their products to enhance the performance of multithreaded code. For example, Mentor Graphics recently announced Mentor Embedded Sourcery CodeBench, a next-generation Integrated Development Environme...
Embedded designs destined for defense applications require secure platforms for military communications such as software-defined radios, command/control ground stations, and combat systems. As security requirements expand into broader market segments, demand increases for security-certifie...
With Android-based devices now representing a sizable segment of the smartphone universe, there is a huge potential market for hardware accessories, including automotive, home, fitness/health, and business applications. Addressing this new market, Microchip Technology recently announced Ac...
As FPGA systems increase in both complexity and bandwidth, the test and debug phase has become a development bottleneck. With software that promises to redefine how engineers design for debug, Veridae Systems introduced the Corus validation and debug software suite for complex FPGA-based s...
Designers are integrating multicore processors into their embedded devices for improved performance, reduced component count, and lower power requirements. Supporting this trend, VIA Technologies announced a new family of dual-core processors at this year’s Embedded Systems Conferenc...
Any embedded design that includes wireless communications such as building automation, health monitoring, smart metering, and keyless entry systems must address system security to guarantee reliable operation. In the past it has been either too difficult or too expensive to integrate a sec...
As many medical and industrial devices transition to low-power, portable form factors, embedded designers need system components that combine low-power operation with a wide range of measurement capabilities. The new K50 32-bit MCU family from Freescale Semiconductor starts with an integr...
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) became ubiquitous in embedded design to enable high-speed serial interconnects between a host controller and one or more peripheral devices. Expanding your design options, Future Technology Devices International Limited (FTDI) recently announced the FT232H, a...
Controller Area Network (CAN) communications technology is widely used in the automotive, industrial, and medical markets for message-based, serial data exchange among subsystem components. The new PIC18F “K80” 8-bit Microcontroller (MCU) family from Microchip features an enhan...
Serving the need for unattended monitoring and control in industrial applications, Modbus has become an important communications protocol for distributed automation systems. Modbus is an open and royalty-free standard for serial communications between a central controller and scattered re...
Whether you design or purchase the CPU board to power your next embedded project, the processor architecture and integrated features are important elements in the selection process. This architecture is at the heart of any embedded system and will influence system performance, component co...
Embedded system designers can significantly lower development costs and schedules by adopting hardware and software compatible with the widely supported x86 personal computer architecture. Multiple applications such as digital signage, set top boxes, information kiosks, point-of-sale machi...
Plug in mezzanine cards allow embedded designers to easily upgrade performance as a system matures or to completely change functionality to meet new requirements. XMC, as defined by VITA 42, is a popular embedded computing standard that combines the familiar PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) with t...
We’ve been looking for examples of approaches enabling telehealth devices in a growing market projected to be as big as $8 billion by 2015. Whether building a glucose monitor, blood pressure meter, or fitness device, a small but powerful and flexible System-on-Chip (SoC) platform ena...
Debugging multicore code is one of the most interesting, nontrivial problems software designers face today. Problems that only show up on Mondays with a full moon and no silver bullets available can devastate humanity, and problems with concurrent code similarly devastate programmers becau...
