Architecture & Design

The business case behind how virtual prototyping speeds development, improves hardware and software quality, and improves ROI.

OpenCL aims to open up the performance of graphics processors to other applications. It is also one more way in which compilation is being moved to runtime to make it easier to move code dynamically across heterogeneous platforms.

The QorIQ AMP (Advanced Multi-Processing) family was unveiled by Freescale Semiconductor in June and is an aggressive play for the control plane market. As such it is both innovative in its own right and also shows what kind of performance communications designers must deliver to meet the overall system demands of today’s customers. At its [...]

While silicon vendors are taking the lead in bringing the multicore revolution to embedded markets, software developers of embedded operating systems, middleware, and applications are struggling to keep pace. A major hurdle is transiting to the multicore environment, which requires a paradigm shift in design strategies for legacy systems. This white paper addresses one such [...]

Before the widespread adoption of multicore systems, designers had been accustomed to the operating system managing resource allocation. It has been quite a challenge for engineers who now find themselves faced with the prospect of having to take direct control of these management tasks themselves. In response, the Multicore Association has established the Multicore Resource [...]

The single core processor is reaching its performance ceiling, due to energy, thermal and power concerns. To address these issues that cause design difficulties, many embedded designers are migrating embedded applications from single core to multicore. This article provides an outline for a software strategy to progress from one core to two and beyond using [...]

The embedded market sees great potential in improving utility supplies but it presents complex challenges, says Alistair Morfey.

System Modeling Language (SysML) is a Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile that allows the creation of standard descriptions of a system. However, this profile is too generic to address embedded and real-time system design. The Modeling and Analysis for Real-Time and Embedded Systems (MARTE) UML profile attempts to fill this gap by providing elements from [...]

The increasing use of electronics systems in today’s cars, trucks and other vehicles inevitably presents a new set of security challenges. Primarily for safety reasons but also for commercial ones, the components used in automotive systems must be extremely resistant to malicious attacks. There are essentially two domains for in-vehicle security: ‘inter-vehicle’ and ‘intra-vehicle’ or, [...]

Imagination Technologies creates and licenses semiconductor intellectual property (IP) processor cores for graphics, video, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP and multi-standard communications applications. These products are complemented by software tools and drivers as well as developer and middleware ecosystems. The company recently embarked on the development of an advanced system-on-chip for one of its customers that could [...]