Embedded product development and networking

Testing and traceability play a vital role in embedded product development. Traceability rendered via Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) software enables the team to automatically generate networking cases that link back to requirements, and report defects that link back to test cases. By knowing that defects are addressed and test cases run successfully, the team can have an immediate networking and accurate accounting of the state of product requirements.

Fifteen or 20 years ago, many embedded systems consisted of an 8-bit processor with a few KB of memory and perhaps a couple hundred lines of networking. Today, the explosion of embedded systems in automobiles, ATMs, cell phones, and other devices has dramatically changed that dynamic. It’s not uncommon to see multiple 32- and 64-bit multicore processors on an Ethernet network, running multiple applications totaling hundreds of thousands of lines of code in these systems.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/application-testing-traceability-embedded-product-development/

About building, maintaining, and evolving proprietary network systems

In recent years, building, maintaining, and evolving proprietary network systems for telecom-grade applications that are highly available and "always on" have become increasingly prohibitive from the perspective of cost, risk management, time to revenue, and so on. The custom-built approach becomes even less cost effective as Communications Service Providers (CSPs) move toward offering cloud-based services, where they have to compete with non-traditional providers that offer such services on networks built using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) building blocks.

A change in market dynamics is causing a fundamental paradigm shift in industry's thinking: Instead of continuing to invest precious Research and Development (R&D) resources and dollars to build expensive, special-purpose proprietary systems with the hope that they will never fail, industry leaders are now assuming that there will be hardware and software failures and thus designing systems and applications that continue to provide end-user service in the presence of such failures.
State-of-the-art software and related standards have made significant advances in recent years to support sophisticated schemes and quick implementation of highly available applications and services that can run on relatively inexpensive COTS hardware systems. Some significant industry standardization efforts are:

• PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), an industry consortium that creates and promotes COTS hardware standards that can be used for a variety of network applications
• The Carrier Grade Linux effort of the Linux Foundation that has helped create a version of Linux suitable for telecom gear
• The Service Availability Forum (SAF), whose interface specifications have long been used to develop COTS middleware that ensures uninterrupted service availability of network applications. Multiple implementations of these specifications exist, including an open source version that is available from the OpenSAF

refer to : http://xtca-systems.com/articles/engineered-cots-network-systems/

Gaming Platform with AMD G-Series Chipset

A new All-in-One Gaming Board, the AMB-A55EG1. AMB-A55EG1 features AMD Embedded G-Series T56N 1.65GHz dual-core APU, two DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM, which provides great computing and graphic performance is suitable for casino gaming and amusement applications. It is designed to comply with the most gaming regulations including GLI, BMM, and Comma 6A. AMB-A55EG1 is specifically designed to be a cost competitive solution for the entry-level gaming market.

AMB-A55EG1 utilizes the functions of an X86 platform, 72-pin Gaming I/O interface, intrusion detection and also various security options, and a complete line of Application Programming Interfaces to create smoother gaming development.

For more information on AMB-A55EG1 or any other products, please contact your local Acrosser sales channel or logon to our website: www.acrosser.com

Product information：
http://www.acrosser.com/Products/Gaming-Platform/All-in-One-Gaming-Board/AMB-A55EG1/AMD-Embedded-G-Series-AMB-A55EG1.html

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New challenge for gaming industry

Ecosystems for tremendous gaming platforms factors exist at various levels, making some more popular than others. Companies still continue to develop proprietary mezzanines to meet specific requirements, and this is expected to continue as long as gaming platforms components exist.

Gaming platform are an important design element to many board form factors. They grew out of a necessity to gain more board real estate or to incorporate modular flexibility to the original form factor. In the early days, few, if any, standards for mezzanines existed. However, over time, standards emerged to make it easier to incorporate mezzanines into designs

refer to: http://vita-technologies.com/articles/stacked-standardizing-mezzanine-modules/

Top 10 Chopper with embedded technology

The embedded medical department of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), Germany, is cooperating with the Health Foundation Hospital in Noerdlingen in testing the exchange of real-time medical images and other medical data during an operation or other emergency tasks. LMU not only educates medical students, but also operates one of the most embedded  hospitals in Germany. The hospital in Noerdlingen is small and old, founded in the 13th century, but very modern. It serves several small communities around it.

Noerdlingen is fairly remote by German standards, which is one reason why it was chosen for this embedded application. So if an operation is or becomes critical, experts in Munich can literally see what is going on in the operation room in Noerdlingen and give recommendations on what to do or analyze the available data, including Computed Tomography (CT) scans. A number of embedded electronic devices (blood pressure, heart frequency, ultrasound, laser imaging, nerve reaction speed, and so on), high-performance computer systems, and high-speed communications links are involved in this application.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/embedded-medical-biological-applications/#at_pco=cfd-1.0

Deploying techniques on industrial-computer-boards

Requirements to deploy
Most of the requirements to deploy a critical system are based on the real-time response of the system to the processes they monitor and control. The top requirements are related to:

• Memory protection - A misbehaved thread can corrupt the kernel's own code or internal data structures causing all types of bad behaviors to the system.
• Fault tolerance and high availability - Even the best software has latent bugs. As applications become more complex and perform more functions, the number of bugs in fielded systems continues to rise. System designers must, therefore, plan for failures and employ fault recovery techniques.
• Mandatory vs. discretionary access control - Mandatory access control provides guarantees to the access of a device or file. Discretionary access controls are only as effective as the applications using them, and these applications must be assumed to have bugs in them.
• Guaranteed resource availability: space domain and time domain - A critical process cannot, as a result of malicious or careless execution of another process, run out of memory resources or deadlock due to priority conflicts that block resources.
• Schedulability - Meeting hard deadlines is especially important, and missing a deadline can be a critical fault; the access to system services must be deterministic.
• Interrupt latency - Some interrupts are higher priority and require a faster response time than others; how long it takes to respond is critical.
• Bounded execution times - Just as response time is critical, how long a task takes to execute is also important.
• Priority inversion - A lower task can block a higher priority task; predictably resolving the block is a must.
• Security - Everything is becoming connected, so trusted computing is more important than ever to prevent malicious attacks.

refer: http://vita-technologies.com/articles/operating-impact-critical-systems/

http://www.acrosser.com 

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/