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Tech Focus: Down to embedded business at FTF 2012
HIGHLIGHTS
A decision-tree approach to picking the right embedded multicore software architecture
Multicore networking in Linux user space with no performance overhead
Building a low cost deterministic industrial Ethernet system
Using drowsy cores to lower power in multicore SoCs
Editor's Note
The annual Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) being held this week (June 18-21) in San Antonio, Texas, is a good way to cure the summer doldrums with healthy doses of stimulating lectures and workshops on cutting edge technology. If you can't attend, you can sign up on the Freescale web site to view the presentations when they become available.
In addition to keynote speeches from Freescale's new CEO Gregg Lowe, the X Prize Foundation's Dr. Peter Diamandis, Doug Yates of Rousch Yates Engines and Dr. Peter van Manen of McClaren Electronic Systems, the technology forum will include several hundred lectures, panel sessions, hands-on workshops, and Lunch and Learn sessions divided into eight topic tracks: microcontrollers, processors, analog and power, DSP, RF and wireless, sensors, software, tools, and technologies.
To complement this cornucopia of design information, here are a range of recent Freescale related design articles. white papers, webinars, product and news stories. Of these, my Editor's Top Picks are:
A decision-tree approach to picking multicore software
Building a low power deterministic industrial Ethernet system
Taking a multicore DSP approach to medical ultrasound beamforming
Freescale controller continuum
Maximize PowerQUICC and QorIQ design
Design How-Tos
Thread synchronization techniques for better multicore system power/performance tradeoffs
An in-depth look at a thread synchronization mechanism based on hardware supplied primitives for use in multicore designs to guarantee both power savings and improved system performance as well as RTOS overhead.
A decision-tree approach to picking the right embedded multicore software architecture
Freescale's Robert Oshana walks the embedded software developer through a multicore “decision tree” for selecting software components best suited to the app, such as RTOS, Linux, RT-Linux, or none.
Analyzing multithreaded applications—Identifying performance bottlenecks on multicore systems
Here's a step by step method for identifying and analyzing bottlenecks in multithreaded applications on multicore systems.
Building a low cost deterministic industrial Ethernet system
In this Product How-To design article, Freescale engineers describe how to use the company's new MPC8309 and MPC8306/S processors to implement low cost deterministic Ethernet designs with IEEE 1588.
Taking a multicore DSP approach to medical ultrasound beamforming
A Product How-to on using Freescale MSC8156 multicore DSP to produce diagnostically useful medical ultrasound imaging results, using no more than about 38% of the resources of the DSP, leaving enough room to also perform Doppler imaging.
Multicore networking in Linux user space with no performance overhead
In this Product How-To Design article, the Freescale authors discuss multi-core network SoCs and how to leverage them efficiently for data path processing, the limitations of current software programming models, and how to use the VortiQa zero-overhead user space software framework in designs based on the QorIQ processor family.
Pick the right multicore virtualization use case for your design
According to Rob Oshana and Stuart Yoder of Freescale, while virtualization enables the sharing of hardware resources on a single computer system, allowing multiple OSes to simultaneously share the system, the trick is picking the use case that best matches your application.
Transitioning to multicore processing
Hesitating to make the shift from single- to multiple-core processing in your design? Here's a guide to making the transition.
Using drowsy cores to lower power in multicore SoCs
Freescale engineers describe a cascading power management technique that steers tasks to a smaller number of cores during non-peak activity periods so that the idle cores can enter a minimal-power or “drowsy” state.
Virtualization options for embedded multicore systems
There are a number of paths to virtualization for embedded systems. After a tour of those options, Freescale Semiconductor's Syed Shah makes the case for the bare metal hypervisor-based approach — coupled with hardware virtualization assists in the core, the memory subsystem and the I/O — as the best-performing option.
It takes two to tango: Simplifying Linux/WinCE real-time applications development using 8- and 32-bit low-cost microcontrollers
Seeing the terms 'Linux/WinCE' in the same sentence as '8-bit probably comes as a surprise to most people. As the title, 'It takes two to tango' suggests, 8-bit microcontroller units (MCUs) can actually make Linux and WinCE software application development easier.
Building a power meter application with an 8-bit MCU
In this product how-to article Radomir Kozub describes how to use Freescale's 8-bit MC9S08LH64 to build an intelligent and accurate single-phase power metering design, while keeping a low cost bill of materials.
2012 Embedded Market Survey webinar
UBM Electronics' 17th annual survey of embedded systems designers worldwide shows trends in software and hardware usage. The 2012 Embedded Market Survey also looks at languages, productivity, and the challenges design teams rank as most important. A webinar on Friday April 20 will examine the results from over 1,700 respondents from across the embedded industry, the dataset enables a deep analysis to track key changes in this important electronics industry segment. There will also be the opportunity to ask questions online. To register click here .
Products
Scalable Cortex-M4 wireless chipset for ZigBee Smart Energy Version 2.0
Freescale Semiconductor is expanding its Kinetis microcontroller (MCU) portfolio with the industry's first wireless solution built on the ARM Cortex-M4 processor for smart energy, smart metering and building control applications.
Freescale baseband-to-antenna reference design targets femtocells
Targeting femtocells the new reference design works for WCDMA as well as LTE and is configurable for FDD and TDD applications up to 2.7GHz.
Latest Freescale wireless robot can walk, dance, and teach sensor programming
Tower System mechatronics robot and board enable rapid sensor application development with easy-to-use programming language and expanded capabilities
Freescale adds low end processors to i.MX 6 family for industrial multimedia
Freescale Semiconductor is introducing two lower cost processors that are pin-compatible with the existing i.MX 6 family of devices for industrial and embedded multimedia applications.
K70 adds LCD driver to Kinetis MCUs
The Kinetis K70 family from Freescale Semiconductor targets applications that require a sophisticated graphics LCD user interface as well as advanced connectivity and security functionality.
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