Texas Instruments’ MSP430 microcontroller platform has been one of the industry’s leading ultra-low-power architectures for more than a decade. Each generation has been focused on setting new records. The latest, Wolverine, cuts power and energy consumption by more than half.

Linux®-based systems have been dominant in enterprise networking for more than a decade. They have been the basis of consumer electronics devices dating back to the original TiVo DVR in 1999, and wireless handsets beginning with the NEC phones for DoCoMo in 2003. However, many vertical markets are only now seeing new devices built on [...]

This paper looks at the embedded software technology that enables the development of mobile devices and portable equipment. The medical instrumentation sector is used as an example. A brief review of healthcare trends is followed by the identification of the key characteristics of such devices and how connectivity (wired and wireless) is influencing the designs [...]

Danish life science entrepreneur Medotech needed a way to provide secure and simple access to its Grindcare medical devices deployed on patients’ home networks. This article outlines how Medotech solved the problem using Nabto’s patented off-the-shelf embedded software and describes how the implementation simplifies system maintenance and future development. A further section considers the integration [...]

The use of multicore processors is on the rise to meet inexorable demand for increasingly sophisticated functionality in embedded systems. Hardware virtualization technology provides a complementary and game-changing approach to maximizing the utility of that extra silicon horsepower. The Power Architecture has included hardware virtualization support since 2001 in its server-based instruction set architecture (ISA). [...]

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 development of medical devices, particularly portable medical devices, is expensive, and the time-to-market is long. Yet, social trends are making these one of the most exciting product segments for the embedded systems market. The article reviews key decisions a device designer must make in terms of the MCUs and other silicon and software that [...]

Google’s Android platform was originally developed for the mobile communications device market, but in recent months has also generated growing interest in other sectors. The most notable of these include embedded systems and consumer electronics. The article provides an overview of what is contained in Android and how its various options as well as its [...]

Major players in embedded development tools debate some of the key issues facing themselves and their customers.

Until recently, operating system (OS) specification for embedded systems has been seen largely as an ‘either/or’ exercise. Similarly, OSs that have their foundations in the embedded market and those that have grown out of desktop computers have been seen as competing rather than complementary technologies. Cost and performance criteria within specifications will often lead to [...]