The use of open source software has become so widespread that even governments are interested. Will it lead to the end of commercial software models, or become their saviour? Philip Ling looks at some of the latest developments.

Open is the new optimized

Design software companies are making it easier to get information in and out of their flows, while also making those flows more accessible to the competition. Philip Ling looks at the latest developments to find out if openness is the next phase of co-opetition.

To ZigBee or not to ZigBee?

The explosion of wireless technologies in recent years has allowed the emergence of several standards, especially in the Industrial Scientific & Medical (ISM) band. Among these emerging standards ZigBee is considered one of the most promising.

The ISM Revolution: the next big thing

Penetration of the low-power wireless devices operating in the ISM frequency band into everyday life (security, medical, industrial, agricultural, etc.) is expanding.

Managing open-source software during system design

System design with open-source software has many advantages. Most notably among them is that development organizations can build systems faster, more flexibly, and more economically by tapping into this vast, free resource.

The ITRS process roadmap and nextgen embedded multicore SoC design

The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors shows that new semiconductor approaches to scaling and new functionality on- and off-chip will be required.

CompactPCI proves its mettle in medical design

CompactPCI brings a lot to the table for embedded designers. For many years now, military and aerospace designers have appreciated its standards-based, high performance, small form factor design with highly ruggedized connectors and a software platform based on the very familiar PCI bus.

System Level Design: Taking a top-down view

Building a system from the ground up is coming under an increasing amount of criticism, as top-down methodologies mature to include rapid prototyping. Phil Ling takes a look at the latest developments.

A first look at ARM’s Cortex M0

With ARM’s latest M core targeting applications demanding low power with high performance, Phil Ling asks could we finally be entering the era of the 16-bit MCU.

RTOS certification makes progress High-Tec EDV-Systeme GmbH is working with a customer to certify its PXROS-HR high reliabiliy real-time operating system to the SIL-3 certification level.

Virtualization, a concept of the mainframe computing and business IT world, is no longer a technology restricted to large computing centers and business computing environments. Increasingly confronted with the requirement to communicate with business IT and to integrate complex processing environments, programmers and developers of embedded systems increasingly rely on virtualization techniques.

Faster code generation for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become a hot research topic and show much promise to become a driver of current and future microelectronic technologies. This emerging technology offers exciting potential for numerous application areas including environmental, medical, military, transportation, entertainment and crisis management.

The best of both worlds?

Could the marriage of Power over Ethernet and Power Line Carrier be the preferred green and cost effective solution, for combining power and data distribution asks Koen Geirnaert, product marketing manager at ON Semiconductor.

No half-way house

EDA applications are among the most complex and compute-intensive software ever written, and must now aggressively pursue parallel processing to accelerate the design of future ICs says Tom Spyrou of Cadence Design Systems.

Is home networking coming of age?

Powerline communications technology could be about to reach its full potential, to become more than just a wire replacement according to Pablo Gagliardo, product marketing manager, DS2.

High-definition surveillance systems using low-cost FPGAs

This article describes the architecture of a HD surveillance camera and shows how the entire system is built using a low-cost FPGA.

Using an interface wrapper module to simplify implementing PCIe on FPGAs

Many end-applications today use an FPGA-based design as an inherent component of their solution. They often require PCI Express (PCIe) as an indispensible feature, to provide a standardized interface with other components in the system.

Optimization of current-limiting solutions for USB 3.0

PPTC protection devices can help meet the new current demands of USB 3.0

A SystemC-Based RTOS model for multiprocessor systems-on-chips: part 2 - uniprocessor systems

In this part in this three part series we present the basics of uniprocessor scheduling, which are the prerequisites for understanding multiprocessor scheduling.

Understand mobile IP: part 3

Mobile IP is a dynamic routing protocol where end devices signal their own routing updates and dynamic tunnels eliminate the need for host route propagation. Need to learn about or brush up on Mobile IP? Here's your chance. This excerpt from Understanding Mobile IP, is an exhaustive and valuable tutorial.