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Emerging trends in embedded space

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

If it wasn't for embedded technologies, we wouldn't be using our mobile

phones for sending and receiving emails, checking word documents, and carrying

our presentations on it. If it wasn't for embedded, we wouldn't be listening to

theatre quality audio on the move, watching HD movies on a train, and navigating

our way on a live map fitted in our car. Embedded tech has completely changed

the way we work, live, and enjoy. In this story, we will try to throw some light

on future and current trends of this industry covering domains like embedded

hardware, software, databases and operating systems.

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Multicore



With the need for efficient processing increasing every day, the major way

to increase processing power was to increase frequency. Now as frequency

increased from 5MHz to 3GHz, the power consumption increased which resulted in

heavy heat dissipation. Then came the intelligent idea of putting multiple

processing units on a single chip. Multi-core processors take advantage of

relationships between power and frequency, both cores share power and work on

same frequency. This gives a very high performance boost. Programming models

used by multicore processors at this time are SMP, loosely coupled

multiprocessing and AMP. SMP stands for symmetric multiprocessing. In this

model, with the help of operating system along with algorithms, dynamic load

balancing of tasks submitted for processing is done. In loosely coupled

multiprocessing approach that is very popular in cell phone designs, different

cores are assigned different tasks. Finally AMP (asymmetric multiprocessing) is

a kind of hybrid of above two models in this approach. Some load balancing is

done like SMP along with task assignment to cores (like loosely coupled).

Greatest advantage of this model for embedded system developer is maximum

utilization of resources and scalability.

Embedded Virtualization



The other buzz word at this point in embedded world is virtualization. As we

all know virtualization is a means of maximizing resource utilization. For

example by vitalizing your server, one can run multiple servers on a single

piece of server hardware, this not only saves hardware resources but also power

consumption and time. In embedded domain the future of virtualization is in

microkernel development. Microkernel is OS kernel that does not provide OS

services but provides minimum or only essential mechanism required to implement

those services. Here services include address-space management, thread

management and inter process communication. Given minimalistic design approach

and light weight user space drivers, microkernels are widely deployed and ideal

for embedded virtualization.

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Mr.

Nitin Pai, General Manager, Marketing, Tata Elxsi Ltd.
TATA Elxsi being in this

domain from 1989, what changes have you seen in embedded system space over

the last decade?



The trend is towards building a heterogeneous core to meet the extreme

performance, cost constraints thereby packing more and more complex

platforms in a single chip (SoC). Chips customized for specific application

and addressing specific product segment e.g. - addressing the networking

product market with Network on Chip (NoC) will be popular in the near

future. Multicore processors and configurable processors are showing much

greater demand in the market. The trend in the CE segment is towards

providing portability and mobility to all devices, to the extent possible,

through miniaturization and providing wireless interfaces.

With huge mobile penetration in India, are

there new technologies and trends that are emerging in this domain?



Multi-featured and multi-utility high-end phones will be in demand in

future. Handsets with Media player, Bluetooth, Camera, Touch-screen,

expandable memory slots are already very popular today. Mobile TV is touted

to be the revolutionary feature, which will drive the mobile handset

segment. The most popular trend is towards providing ultimate convergence

e.g. multimedia convergence (voice, video & data), network convergence (GSM,

CDMA, GPRS, WLAN) and device convergence. The future is also moving towards

providing unlimited storage on all the mobile devices. From the

multi-utility perspective the mobile phones are also being used as a PDA,

navigation device, gaming console etc.

Can you throw some light on how automobile

industries increasing demand for more sophisticated embedded systems?



Over 70 Control Loops are being deployed in an advanced Car (Like BMW).

This is a well evolved market in US, Japan and Europe. The traction in US,

Europe and Japan is to move towards technologies that enable running of

multiple applications on single ECUs. The words used to describe these are

fusion of applications / sensors etc. AUTOSAR, FlexRay and high power chips

will end up as major contributors to this movement. Primary growth driving

factors in automotive industry are Active Safety, Environmental

considerations and Communication (Car 2 Car, Car 2 Infrastructure, Internet

to Car etc). In India, advanced vehicles (Indian) vehicles like Safari Dicor

2.2 and Scorpio mHawk will have at most 10 to 12 ECUs interconnected to

deliver all automated applications. Hence the potential for growth is

enormous. Cost is a major constraint in Indian market and will take us at

least 10 years to see Indian made cars running with 50 ECUs for Indian

market.

What are the emerging trends in embedded

space as whole?



Demand pull in Embedded space happens mainly from these segments;

  • Consumer Electronics
  • Medical Electronics
  • Automotive Electronics
  • Industrial Robotics Electronics
  •  

Programming on Hardware (SoC) will gain more

traction along with fusion of multiple applications in to a single core.

SoC



System on Chip (SoC) is an integration of computer components on a single

chip. It has hardware components along with software components (that controls

the microprocessor and peripherals). SoC is everywhere from your mobile phones

to portable media players and demand for enhanced functionality of these devices

is pushing SoC designers to build more powerful SoCs. Latest SoCs feature CPU

running at above 500MHz.

The other advances in embedded domain are in embedded database and search.

Embedded database is a software component that is part of the application, not a

separate running application. Its operations are invoked by the application.

Another way to look at it is that embedded databases are embedded within an

application. In networking and telecommunication domain, ATCA (Advanced

Telecommunications Computing Architecture) is future trend. AdvancedTCA is a

series of industry standard specifications for the next generation of carrier

grade communications equipment.

What lies in future of embedded system are low energy consuming small form

factor equipments that can be upgraded with minimum efforts. This is why

embedded systems are moving towards open source.

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