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May 6, 2008 - This week, Bryon Moyer brings us a peer-to-peer paper on Local Operating Networks (LONs).  When you’re connecting embedded nodes together in a factory control system  or similar application, you need a versatile solution that’s easy, inexpensive, and not necessarily fast.  Bryon looks at networking solutions from Echelon and examines how they can be useful for low-cost connections of embedded systems used for large-scale control applications.

Coming to a Home Near You?
LONworks Implementations Spreading (Bryon Moyer)

This is a story that starts with the improbable topic of building controls – you know, those complex systems that ensure that no matter where you are in the building, it’s too damn cold. Way back in the last century, these controls were dominated by large companies with complete proprietary systems. OK, they sorta still are, but work with me here. The users of the systems were more or less captive to their controls company, and changes to the system needed by the users resulted in a nice high-profit source of consulting income to the controls company.

Building controls tend to consist of a wide variety of sensors and actuators widely dispersed throughout the building. Central control requires some way of connecting all of these elements so that controllers can measure whatever parameters they’re interested in and make changes if necessary. Thermostats are a great example, although for this situation, strictly speaking, you wouldn’t really envision an all-in-one thermostat with sensor and actuator tied together like you have in your home, but rather separate elements that could be housed in a single box. In one scenario, the temperature sensor reports to the central controller, which then tells the actuator whether to turn on fans and either cool or heat the space; in another scenario, the fan or temperature actuator queries the sensor for the temperature and then responds accordingly.

These devices are small and relatively inexpensive, so the technologies for interconnecting them have to be inexpensive, or else they’d overwhelm the cost of the device. IP was the dominant standard technology at the time, and it was just too expensive to use. In addition, the cheapest physical implementation was 10BASE-T, which uses a star configuration, requiring home runs for each node – that means lots of wire running through the walls and less flexibility for moving things around. [more]

It’s the Parallelism, Stupid!
(Bryon Moyer)

A couple years ago I was participating in a standards meeting of multicore insiders, and a discussion ensued as to how to use such phrases as “multicore,” “multiprocessor,” etc. The discussion went on for a bit, making it pretty clear that this was not a cut-and-dried issue even amongst the cognoscenti.

Shortly after that I was having another conversation and was using the term “multicore” rather loosely, and at some point was, with great certitude, corrected in my usage. Which gave me the sense that such phrases may have as much value as buzzword-of-the-month (no one cares about multiprocessor anymore) as technical term. [more]

Getting Back to a Simpler Life
A New Multicore Communications API is Ratified (Bryon Moyer)

Thanks to a late arrival, I walked briskly through the jetway and out into the terminal. Glancing out through the window, I confirmed, to my relief, what the map in the airline magazine had shown: my connection, while technically in another terminal, was in fact quite close. I could see it from here, although I was separated from it by about 40 yards and two layers of glass. But as I hurried in that direction, I realized that you could only get from one terminal to another on some tram-like affair; you couldn’t walk it without going back out through security. With a sigh of annoyance, I quickened my pace past six gates to where the tram station was. Which was when realized it was one of those trams that circles in one direction along its route. If I was in luck, mine would be the first stop. I wasn’t in luck; the tram went the opposite way, so my stop was the last stop. Aligning all my chi to will the tram faster, I got to my stop, dashed out the door, skipped steps down the escalator, and vaulted towards the gate. Just in time. In 20 minutes I had managed to travel a net 40 yards. [more]

Multicore Momentum
The Multicore Expo Bulks Up (Bryon Moyer)

A couple years ago a small ragtag conference took place in Santa Clara just before the relative behemoth Embedded Systems Conference. “Ragtag” might be a bit unfair, but it seemed that way only when compared to the much larger and better-funded conferences; perhaps “scrappy” is a better characterization. This was just a start, the first edition of the Multicore Expo, and at the time, many in multicore seemed to be grasping for relevance. The participants were all sure multicore was guaranteed in the future, but there was no swagger in the strut. Would multicore go mainstream this year? Next year? [more]

Java Earning Its Wings
Aonix Makes Real Time Almost Safety Critical (Bryon Moyer)

It happened just like that. In the middle of a conversation, he got a kind of misty look in his eyes, like something wasn’t quite right. His breathing became more labored, he hunched forward a bit, and the next thing you knew, he was in full heart attack mode. An ambulance was quickly called for; this is where seconds count. As the ambulance was en route, efforts were made to clear the way for the EMTs so that they could get to work as quickly as possible. The main door was propped open, and an attempt was made to reserve the spot in front for the ambulance. But just as the ambulance was getting close, a garbage truck came by and blocked access. The garbage men casually jumped down from the truck and started collecting the garbage. Attempts to get them to back off even for a moment were in vain; they were scheduled to collect the garbage, and by George, that’s what they were gonna do. The ambulance would just have to wait. [more]

MIPS Moves on Multi-Core
MIPS32 1004K (Kevin Morris)

At first, the concept of “multi-core” from a processor IP company might seem a bit confusing.  Couldn’t we already put multiple MIPS cores on our devices?  If your concept of multi-core ends with putting more than one processor on a chip, you may not be yet dialed into the subtleties.

This week, MIPS launched their highest-performance solution ever with the new MIPS32 1004K “Coherent Processing System” – a multi-core, multi-threaded IP solution. [more]

As Easy As Pie
(Bryon Moyer)

ANNOUNCER: It’s spring, the harvest is and holidays are behind us, and the apples in cold storage are starting to age. Someone needs to come to their rescue before it’s too late. And that can mean only one thing here in Kitchen Stadium: it’s Time for Pie. So today’s challenge will be an homage to Mom’s apple pie.

But things are going to work a little differently this time out. Instead of a challenger taking on one of the Iron Chefs, five Iron Chefs will battle each other. Half of the points awarded will be for quality – taste, execution, and presentation – but half will be awarded by number of pies made. Each chef can have a team of assistants, but due to the available space, each team is limited to five people. [more]

Embedded World
(Dick Selwood)

Embedded world was always big. Now it is enormous. Nearly 700 companies were exhibiting there this year (twice the number booked for ESC in San Jose next month), with over 17,000 visitors.  Just think – if I spent half an hour talking to each exhibitor, and that is a journalist’s schedule for an average interview, allowing for 40 hour weeks, and not including lunch, coffee and comfort break, it would take nearly nine weeks just to meet everyone.  Nor does that include the press conferences, which normally demand an hour of attention, nor the conference that ran for three days – so call it ten weeks altogether. The power point slides alone would stretch from here to somewhere way over there. [more]

Bringing Reality to PCB Design
by Rob Irwin, Altium Limited

In a fundamental shift that redefined how products are created, the transition of engineering design from manual drafting-based methodologies to Computer-aided Design has transformed design in virtually all branches of engineering. The application of CAD in the electronics industry is no exception, and has revolutionized the way engineers work and the products that can be developed. You won’t find too many engineers that would be willing to go back to the old methods. [more]