Low Country Software Ramblings

Richard Goering talks about the need for future Multi-core chips to provide good software support. This means that programming and debugging systems-on-chip with half a dozen different cores (one or 2 processors, a DSP, some other specialized units) needs to be possible via a single debugging/programming interface. As someone who has sold emulators, I can sympathize with the GreenHills & WindRivers of this world. Challenging does not even begin to describe what Richard is talking about.

One of the joy fun thing about reading the EETimes is their Under The Hood features, where they take apart techno-gadgets. It is also available online. Things they took apart includes cellular phones, RIM Blackberries, a Roomba, the Nintendo Wii, the PSP3, Xbox 360 and much more. This brings back fond memories of taking apart clocks and old TV sets…

Ralph Depping has his own embedded happening blog entries: EmbeddedSphere.  I’m jealous! It’s such a great title. Looks like Ralph is dealing with Windows for SmartPhones, not something I ever had the opportunity to do.

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Since the web is crying out for yet another news aggregation blog, I feel compelled to fill the void. Actually, in keeping with the original intent of this blog (oh, where have we gone wrong? The siren songs of .NET and software design at large have struck) we will limit the content of these posts to things closely related to embedded systems. Expect a large dose of hardware related news and some embedded stuff.

Due to manpower issue and lack of readily re-syndicated sources (meaning, I’ll be reading dead trees), I expect this to be a weekly issue.

Rick Merritt has a nice piece in EE Times about the looming shortage of programmers. This is a big concern to address the next computing challenge: parallelism in the multi-core era.

Rick also has a side article about TechFest 07.  Microsoft Research’s Showcase of project.  Displays made of MEMS instead of LCDs is what got my attention.

Jeff Bier points out that if you’re going to market a new embedded processor,  provide good tools and reference designs.  Amen to that!

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