Aug, 2007
by Cliff Brake
Welcome to the Embedded Perspective Newsletter, a free monthly newsletter providing insights, reviews, and perspective on Embedded Systems development and related industries.
Feedback is appreciated. Email me at: cbrake@bec-systems.com.
For back issues or to subscribe, visit: http://bec-systems.com/web/content/view/39/35/ . These articles also appear on the BEC Systems web site and are available in an RSS feed. Please forward this to anyone you think might be interested.
In this issue:
* Atmel AT32AP7000 development board review
* The Embedded Industry Transformation
* How to control the cable nightmare
* Open JTAG debugging tool for the PXA270
* Design tips for your embedded Linux product
* Linux 2.6.22 for the Compulab cm-x270
* Howto use a Git topic branch to maintain a patchset
| Atmel AT32AP7000 development board review | |
| I recently purchased an Atmel NGW100 development board which includes an Atmel AT32AP7000 CPU. This CPU is based on the new Atmel AVR32 architecture, and is capable of running full Linux. This review covers the basics of this development board, the AVR32 architecture, options for building Linux for this system, as well as opinions on how a new architecture can succeed in a field of well established architectures like ARM and MIPS. | |
| Read more... | |
| The Embedded Industry Transformation | |
I just ran across an interesting article written by Doug Gaff titled "Is the embedded industry dead?" (http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2891246233.html). The article points out the transformation that is happening in the "embedded" industry. For many systems, we are no longer constrained by minimal resources (http://bec-systems.com/web/content/view/67/9/). Embedded Systems are no longer isolated systems, but parts of larger systems. A few of my own observations: There is more to modern embedded systems than control and logic. We now have to worry about data. In the past the task might be to get a microcontroller to run a state machine, control motors, etc. Today, we need to present a calendar to the user through a web interface, collect information about the location of the Sun, upload statistics to a remote server, support a rich GUI application on a VGA color display. The control aspect is suddenly the small part of the problem, and managing data is often the primary concern. Embedded system development now encompasses many disciplines including OS development, web services, advanced application development in high level languages, and the traditional hardware debugging and low level coding tasks. It is becoming less about writing code and more about integration of the right pieces. As Embedded Systems become more complex, access to specialized knowledge is becoming more important. There is just too much for one person (or even one company) to know. Companies developing competitive products in the future will be the ones who have access to experts. Is your company taking advantage of this transformation? | |
| Read more... | |
| How to control the cable nightmare | |
| Do you ever wonder if there is a better way to manage cables in your lab? I typically have have 5-10 embedded systems on the bench powered up at any give time. When you start thinking of all the cables required to connect these systems (every one requires at least power, serial console, and network), it starts to add up. I recently ran across a product called snaketray (http://snaketray.com/products/wall.html ) and decided it might be the solution to my rats-nest of cables. This article includes a few pictures of my implementation, and some ideas. I'm quite pleased with the result and have high hopes that I'll keep my sanity for a while longer. | |
| Read more... | |
| Open JTAG debugging tool for the PXA270 | |
Looking for a low cost, high functionality JTAG solution for the PXA270? As of several weeks ago, the openocd project now works with the Intel/Marvell PXA270 processor. There are a number of USB based JTAG debuggers available for under $100, so the cost is minimal. This article provides a brief overview of JTAG, suggestions for your hardware design, and how to use OpenOCD (Open On-chip-debugger) with the PXA270. | |
| Read more... | |
| Design tips for your embedded Linux product | |
| When designing a system that runs embedded Linux, there are number of things you can do to make your life a lot easier and provide for future expansion to cover cases you did not anticipate. Following these simple guidelines can drastically improve the efficiency of developing the system, and troubleshooting problems during field testing, and provide the flexibility needed in todays products. | |
| Read more... | |
| Linux 2.6.22 for the Compulab cm-x270 | |
I just completed porting the cm-x270 Linux kernel patches to the 2.6.22 kernel. Kernel build is available in OpenEmbedded. Patches are available in the OE tree: http://www.openembedded.org/filebrowser/org.openembedded.dev/packages/linux/compulab-pxa270-2.6.22 Shortly I will be making 2.6.22 the default kernel for the cm-x270 in OpenEmbedded and posting instructions on how to use JFFS2 with the NAND flash on the cm-x270. | |
| Read more... | |
| Howto use a Git topic branch to maintain a patchset, and isolate problems | |
The more I use Git, the more I am really impressed with some of its capabilities. What is Git? Git is a very advanced distributed source code control system that can do some very neat things. For the average developer using open source software, we are mainly concerned about maintaining patch sets (often called a topic branch). Git includes a rebase capability that is very useful for a number of different operations related to maintaining a branch of code including moving a branch forward, moving a branch around on an upstream branch to look for breakage, and merging changesets to create patch files. This article provides a brief overview of some of these operations and several tips.
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