Growing pressure to boost the performance

In response to growing pressure to boost the performance and trim down the size of embedded applications, standards organizations meet regularly to optimize their portfolios in light of the latest available technology. These updated standards take advantage of new silicon architecture combining multiple processors, graphics elements, and complex I/O to deliver the next generation of preengineered, off-the-shelf modules to support many of the high-performance requirements of embedded product development.

These standardized computer platforms allow designers to trade in substantial savings in Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) and scheduling for slightly higher recurring costs. Standards-based designs also shortcut the software development effort by providing access to compatible operating systems, vendor-supplied drivers, and sample firmware.

In the Strategies section of this issue, we asked experts from several standards organizations to bring us up to date on the latest changes affecting embedded designs. Starting things off, Jim Blazer, CTO at RTD Embedded Technologies and active member of the PC/104 Consortium, presents the history and updates in work – such as the latest generation of PCI Express – that support the PC/104 stackable architecture. Citing the need for smaller and more rugged building blocks, Alexander Lockinger, President of the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG) and CTO at Ascend Electronics, covers the trends and new products to expect in 2013. In addition, Jerry Gipper, Director of Marketing at VITA and Editorial Director ofVITA Technologies magazine, reports on the recent Embedded Tech Trends 2013 meeting aboard the Queen Mary and standards work in progress, plus some new technologies such as optical interconnects.

refer: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/evolving-simplify-embedded-development/

Under increasing pressure ....

 IT managers are under increasing pressure to boost network capacity and performance to cope with the data deluge. Networking systems are under a similar form of stress with their performance degrading as new capabilities are added in software. The solution to both needs is next-generation System-on-Chip (SoC) communications processors that combine multiple cores with multiple hardware acceleration engines.

 

The data deluge, with its massive growth in both mobile and enterprise network traffic, is driving substantial changes in the architectures of base stations, routers, gateways, and other networking systems. To maintain high performance as traffic volume and velocity continue to grow, next-generation communications processors combine multicore processors with specialized hardware acceleration engines in SoC ICs.

The following discussion examines the role of the SoC in today’s network infrastructures, as well as how the SoC will evolve in coming years. Before doing so, it is instructive to consider some of the trends driving this need.

refer:http://embedded-computing.com/articles/next-generation-architectures-tomorrows-communications-networks/

About performance management issue

 

Given the increased complexity of processors and applications, the current generation of Operating Systems (OSs) focuses mostly on software integrity while partially neglecting the need to extract maximum performance out of the existing hardware.

Processors perform as well as OSs allow them to. A computing platform, embedded or otherwise, consists of not only physical resources – memory, CPU cores, peripherals, and buses – managed with some success by resource partitioning (virtualization), but also performance resources such as CPU cycles, clock speed, memory and I/O bandwidth, and main/cache memory space. These resources are managed by ancient methods like priority or time slices or not managed at all. As a result, processors are underutilized and consume too much energy, robbing them of their true performance potential.
Most existing management schemes are fragmented. CPU cycles are managed by priorities and temporal isolation, meaning applications that need to finish in a preset amount of time are reserved that time, whether they actually need it or not. Because execution time is not safely predictable due to cache misses, miss speculation, and I/O blocking, the reserved time is typically longer than it needs to be. To ensure that the modem stack in a smartphone receives enough CPU cycles to carry on a call, other applications might be restricted to not run concurrently. This explains why some users of an unnamed brand handset complain that when the phone rings, GPS drops.
refer:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/performance-management-new-dimension-operating-systems/

Development of M2M devices

With advances in wireless technologies, defining a strategy for building wireless M2M-enabled devices is not the dauntingly complex task it was once thought to be. Instead of devoting precious R&D resources to the integration of fragmented, ad hoc technologies, today’s developers can take advantage of increasingly sophisticated Embedded Application Frameworks (Linux, Android, and others), some of which are highly optimized for M2M application development.

 

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, or the ability to connect and manage remote devices over the air, offers enormous potential. With the ability to centrally control remote industrial equipment, trackvehicle fleets, manage electric vehicle charging stations, expand the capabilities of consumer devices, and much more, M2M has profound implications for virtually every industry.
Given the novelty of M2M technology, however, developing connected devices has traditionally been an expensive and time-consuming process, largely due to the fact that system designers had to build the entire M2M architecture from scratch. Today, designers have a powerful new option in their M2M toolkit: Embedded Application Frameworks (EAFs). By deploying connected services on mature, prepackaged Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOSs) and libraries embedded directly into the communications module, M2M designers can substantially reduce the time and costs involved in developing new M2M hardware and focus their efforts on creating innovative connected applications.

refer:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/embedded-frameworks-simplifying-development-m2m-devices/#utm_source=Cloud%2Bmenu&utm_medium=text%2Blink&utm_campaign=articles

Industry: Innovation driven by electronics

 

High-end electronics provide drivers and passengers with in-car navigation and entertainment and information delivered over a wireless network. In fact, many car buyers today care more about the infotainment technologies embedded in the dashboard than what's under the hood. This phenomenon is requiring additional storage space for rich multimedia data and advanced software and applications and is driving an explosive growth of both volatile and nonvolatile memories. Embedded multimedia cards are helping meet this demand in today's memory-hungry automotives.

The automotive market is moderately but steadily growing. Global car sales rose 6 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2012, despite the ongoing headwinds associated with the sovereign debt problems in Western Europe and some moderation in the pace of global economic activity. Global sales of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles are expected to grow from 78 million units in 2011 to more than 100 million units in 2018. In a recent study, Gartner confirmed that electronics are playing a major role in the advancement of automotive technology. Electronic content in cars has been steadily increasing since the first digital engine control modules were introduced in the ’80s.
Today, microelectronics enable advanced safety features, new information and entertainment services, and greater energy efficiency. The electric/electronic share of value added to a state-of-the-art vehicle is already at 40 percent for traditional, internal combustion engine cars and jumps as high as 75 percent for electric or hybrid electric vehicles. This trend will accelerate as advances in semiconductor technology continue to drive down the cost of various electronic modules and subsystems.

Refer:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/automotive-industry-innovation-driven-electronics/

AMB-QM77T1 with Intel 3rd generation mobile processors

The AMB-QM77T1 is the newest Mini-ITX industrial mainboard from Acrosser Technology that supports both of the 3rd and 2nd generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3 mobile processor by Intel QM77 chipset and FCPGA 988 socket.
The Intel 3rd generation mobile processors supported by the AMB-QM77T1 features an integrated GPU, which is capable of supporting such graphical libraries as DirectX11, OpenGL4.0 and OpenCL1.1.
AMB-QM77T1 is the perfect solution to deliver high computing power for a wide range of applications such as medical, industrial automation, kiosk, digital signage, and ATM machines.


 The key features of the AMB-QM77T1 include:
‧  Intel QM77 chipset
‧  FCPGA socket supports 3rd Generation Intel® Core(TM) i7/i5/i3 processors and Celeron
‧  2* DDR3-1600/1333/1066 SO-DIMM up to 16GB
‧  Supports VGA/DVI-D/HDMI/LVDS displays
‧  Support 3 independent display
‧  Dual Intel PCI-E Gigabit LAN
‧  8* USB 2.0, 4* USB 3.0, 3* COM, 3* SATA II, 2* SATA III
‧  1* PCI-E x16, 1* Mini PCI-E, 1* CFast socket
‧  iAMT 8.0, TPM 1.2, Watchdog timer, Digital I/O Support VGA and DVI output

Power your most demanding applications with PCs based on the Intel Core 2 Quad processor

The Intel® Core™2 Quad processor for desktop PCs is designed to handle massive compute and visualization workloads enabled by powerful multi-core technology. Providing the bandwidth you need for multi-threaded applications, Intel Core 2 Quad processors are built on 45nm Intel® Core™ microarchitecture enabling, faster, cooler, and quieter desktop PC and workstation experiences.

Whether you are encoding, rendering, editing, or streaming HD multimedia in the office or on the go, power your most demanding applications with PCs based on the Intel Core 2 Quad processor. Plus, with these processors you get great Intel® technologies built in²:
Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution, enabling delivery of more instructions per clock cycle to improve execution time and energy efficiency
Intel® Intelligent Power Capability, designed to deliver more energy-efficient performance
Intel® Smart Memory Access, improving system performance by optimizing the use of the available data bandwidth
Intel® Advanced Smart Cache, optimized for multi-core processors, providing a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem
Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost, accelerating a broad range of multimedia, encryption, scientific and financial applications by significantly improving performance when executing Intel® Streaming SIMD Extension (SSE/SSE2/SSE3) instructions
Intel® HD Boost³, with Intel® Streaming SIMD Extension 4 (Intel SSE4) instructions for even greater multimedia performance and faster high definition video editing and encoding
Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)², enabling greater security, manageability, and utilization
Future ready, designed to perform in highly threaded programs with powerful Intel® multi-core technology

from
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2quad/index.htm