Multi-core was the topic for Wind River and Green Hills Software. The first hosted a series of presentations and workshops at Embedded World, to demystify multi-core and Open Source development. Its interactive workshop focused on software and hardware teams working together. The company joined with Synopsys to discuss the two companies' teams working together and presented hands-on, parallel workshops which helped delegates to understand the other camp's operating procedures, debugging challenges and constraints. The software company gave talks on developing safe systems and how to use an extendable, open Linux operating system, like Android in the mobile device market. Also looking to the next generation of devices, a third talk was about using hardware accelerated network data forwarding silicon inside a router.
Green Hills also made multi-core development a theme at this year's exhibition with demonstrations of its Integrity RTOS, configured for asymmetric multiprocessing and symmetric multiprocessing modes and tools for all modes of multi-core development (Figure 1).
Its stand was also the venue for demonstrations of secure networking and medical device platforms and JTAG debugging. Visitors could see a platform for secure networking based on Integrity with secure virtualisation advanced file systems, dual TCP/IP v4/v6 host and routing stack, web server, SSH, SSL, IPSec, wireless communications and security software, Layer 3 routing and management software, USB, and development tools. There was also a safety-certified Integrity system for medical middleware, including communications protocols and graphics, secure virtualisation, and a tool suite for medical device software development.
Enhanced system configuration
Development tool companies have been toiling away since the last Embedded World to address the added value that operating systems can bring and how their power and value can be enhanced to benefit embedded design.
Real-Time Systems has released the RTS Hypervisor V2.2, a bare metal (type 1) hypervisor which allows RTOS execution in parallel with operating systems like Linux or Microsoft Windows XP without adding latencies to native real-time performance. Deterministic behaviour remains fully intact. Embedded hypervisors and real-time extensions for Linux or Windows typically require interrupts to be assigned exclusively to the different operating systems. This can make system configuration difficult. To avoid conflicts due to shared interrupts, the enhanced version now allows the use of message signaled interrupts for all operating systems, even if these operating systems inherently do not provide support for the interrupts. The company claims that it has created an industry first by making it possible to automatically analyse the CPU and cache topology of processors, such as the Intel Atom, Core, Xeon or Nehalem processor architectures and intelligently assign CPUs to individual operating systems like Windows or an RTOS. This feature assures that operating systems running in parallel cannot negatively affect each other due to a shared cache topology. To expand support for deterministic operating systems, the hypervisor features an open control module that provides a high-performance virtual network interface, shared memory and other virtualisation components. The control module's paravirtualisation interface can be used to integrate an operating system or any other real-time code into the RTS Hypervisor-based system. By partitioning processor cores, memory and I/O devices into individual independent computers, the hypervisor facilitates hardware consolidation and can reduce overall system costs. Devices or machines that currently use an embedded hardware board in parallel to a computer executing Windows XP can now safely be merged onto a single Intel multi-core hardware to reduce design, manufacturing and maintenance costs, says the company. Just one dual core CPU is needed to execute any RTOS in parallel to, and completely independently from, operating systems. The number of operating systems that can execute simultaneously is limited only by the number of available CPU cores. Using the hypervisor, it is just as easy to run four instances of the same RTOS on a quad core processor as to execute four different operating systems, says the company. Separation of individual operating systems means that any operating system can be independently booted in a user-defined order. The Hypervisor makes it possible to reboot one operating system while the others continue to run. The Hypervisor supports Windows XP, Windows CE, VxWorks, QNX, Microware OS-9, On Time RTOS-32, Linux and pre-emptive Linux in any combination.
Integration for controllers
Two companies have worked together to bring a development tool suite that caters for some of the most popular controllers.
Automated software verification, source code analysis and test tool company, LDRA has integrated its tool suite with IAR's Embedded Workbench for the Microchip PIC18, Atmel AVR, AVR32 and Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontrollers. The tool suite enables designers to use the controller ranges for DO-178B and other rigorous certification standards, such as medical and industrial certification, says the UK-based company. The Workbench goes beyond the capabilities of native tool chains, providing full ANSI C compliance, support for embedded C++ as well as host-controlled I/O facilities not typically available for these microcontrollers. LDRA has added static analysis, code coverage to modified condition/decision coverage, and requirement traceability on these resource-constrained footprints (Figure 2).
The tool suite hooks the microcontrollers' tool chains, allowing for compilation, linking, programming, and execution in these environments. The Testbed element can read IAR project files so that these files can speed static analysis by reading include paths, macros and other settings. The Testbed and the TBrun feature use the project files to compile and control IAR's simulation and device-programming environments, to execute on target, and to extract the results for developers to begin system and unit tests using the IAR infrastructure.
Since test outputs that conform to modified condition/decision coverage are available in hosted as well as microprocessor-based devices, a range of companies and design departments can standardise on a common set of tools that support a variety of devices and target environments. The partnership, says the companies, allows seamless integration to test automation. It cites the example of the MSP430 controller integration which uses IAR's JTAG I/O capabilities as well as cspybat command line integration tools. The hardware simulator is supported by Testbed and TBrun. Developers can test identical instrumented executables and test harnesses on a target and simulator environment, to speed development time and reduce time to market.
The networking show
On company is looking at the phenomenon of edge computing and ways that it can be delivered effectively. Lantronix has added the XPort ProT to its embedded Ethernet networking and compute modules (Figure 3). It provides over five times the processing power and 32 times the memory of its predecessor. The thumb-sized package deploys advanced applications at the network edge. The 32bit processor architecture and advanced networking and security features, enable machine-to-machine edge computing with virtually unlimited customisation, says the company. and application hosting potential, while providing developers with faster time-to-market and unprecedented application development options. XPort Pro is available running Linux and IPv6, so developers can bring a product to market quickly, without having to learn a new operating system and development environment. Integrating ManageLinx VIP AccessT allows designers to easily create solutions that work behind firewalls without the need for a VPN. The module is available with the Evolution OST turnkey operating system and software development kit. This also includes the company's patent-pending Virtual IP Access technology which allows seamless integration with the company's ManageLinx remote services enablement platform. The platform also features SSH and SSL security and encryption and supports a variety of protocol conversions.
Temporal component testing
The latest version of Tessy, a tool to automate unit, module or integration testing of embedded software, could be seen (Figure 4). This version features temporal component testing. The tool, available from Hitex Development Tools, allows the testing of several test objects to be integrated, under certain circumstances, even using simulated time; hence the phrase temporal component testing. Optimisations have also been included to allow better handling of a high number of test cases and to increase performance, says the company. Other improvements relate to code coverage extensions, remote operation and version control of tests.
Figure 1: Green Hills Software enhanced the multicore theme at Embedded World 2010.
Figure 2: LDRA and IAR have combine forces for controller development.
Figure 3:Lantronix brings edge proves automating embedded software is a development bonus.
Figure 4: HiTex Development Tools' latest version of Tessy allows multi-object testing.
