Leveraging IT Technology for industrial controls applications

Posted on September 17, 2013 by admin

With that said, the controls world is going to be moving with anautomation that has a definite consumer bias, with product development and release cycles of six months or less. In an industry where the average life expectancy of an automotive production line is eight years, it is impossible to expect the networking in an industrial setting to keep up with modern IT standards. Therefore, we turn our attention to the technologies that have existed the industrial, with the most open standards and the very best support. These are the protocols we wish to use and keep, and this article highlights and explains some of these technologies. This article does not focus on the technical implementations of each piece of technology. Rather, it is assumed the reader will be using packaged solutions such as a function block for a PLC.

refer to:
http://www.automation.com/leveraging-it-technology-for-industrial-controls-applications

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Compliance within the embedded community

Posted on September 3, 2013 by admin

Ensuring that the development team is aware of – and in compliance with – the obligations associated with each of these open source licenses takes time and effort. Tools that can help to identify and track the underlying licenses that apply and enable license obligations to be met can prove quite valuable when trying to hit aggressive solutions  from product development milestones.

The use of each type of open source license in an embedded product design imposes a unique set of obligations on the development team that is incorporating this software into their products. Because of this, some embedded computer maintain a list of open source licenses approved for use by their developers. Other companies go further, explicitly listing which specific version of each open source package has been approved for possible incorporation into the company’s embedded computer  products.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/the-not-code-quality/

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Testing in-vehicle solutions for tender

Posted on August 13, 2013 by admin

The MOST Cooperation – the organization through which the leading automotive multimedia network Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) is standardized – proudly announces that the newest Specification Rev. 3.0 is on its way to In-Vehicle computers. Further Information on MOST: MOST Forum 2010. The MOST Forum 2010 promises a very high quality conference program offering an insight into the latest and future MOST Technology solutions and studies. This second international MOST Conference and exhibition will take place on 23 March 2010 in Frankfurt (Germany).Various In-Vehicle computers  have already started with first series projects implementing this latest MOST Technology. MOST150 enables the use of a higher bandwidth of 150 Mbps, an isochronous transport mechanism to support extensive video applications, and an embedded Ethernet channel for efficient transport of IP-based packet data. It succeeds in providing significant speed enhancements and breakthroughs while keeping costs down.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/news/most150-series-adoption/

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Implementing hardware for embedded industry

Posted on August 5, 2013 by admin

Implementing the hardware is only one part of the game. OEMs also face the challenge of implementing this state-of-the-art technology in their new or existing applications, including validation and verification of the applications’ functionality and access to hardware functions and I/Os. To reduce the amount of R&D work,  embedded products lower costs and shorten their products’ time to market, they seek ways to cut down their initial development and migration tasks. One approach is to make use of a hardware vendor’ migration services. Driven by the thirst for 3D gaming in consumer electronics, current graphics processing units (GPUs) have evolved into powerful, programmable vector processors that can speed up a wide variety of software applications. These “general-purpose GPUs,” as they are known, are no longer limited to the consumer market. They are making their entrance into the embedded market with the arrival of the new AMD Embedded G-Series platform.

 

refer to:  http://embedded-computing.com/white-papers/white-small-form-factor-sff-designs-2/

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Embedded system changes among the industry

Posted on July 29, 2013 by admin

With improved processing and graphics performance as well as energy efficiency and broad scalability, the 4th generation Intel® Core™ processors with its new microarchitecture provide an attractive solution for a broad array of mid-range to high-end embedded applications in target markets such as medical,  embedded computing, industrial automation, infotainment and military.

The 4th generation Intel® Core™ processors serve the embedded computing space with a new microarchitecture which Kontron will implement on a broad range of embedded computing platforms. Based on the 22 nm Intel® 3D processor technology already used in the predecessor generation, the processors, formerly codenamed ‘Haswell’, have experienced a performance increase which will doubtlessly benefit applications. Beside a 15% increased CPU performance especially the graphics has improved by its doubled performance in comparison to solutions based on the previous generation processors. At the same  embedded computing , the thermal footprint has remained practically the same or has even shrunk.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/white-papers/white-intelr-coretm-processors/

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People comment on medical applications

Posted on July 22, 2013 by admin


Increasing numbers of patients, shrinking numbers of embedded computer physicians, and rising costs are pushing the medical field further into the age of telehealth. Unlike traditional clinical platforms, however, telemedicine demands portability, flexibility, and long lifecycle support from Small Form Factor (SFF) technologies. Targeted at low-power mobile applications, Revision 2.0 of the Qseven Computer-On-Module (COM) specification added support for ARM CPUs and defined embedded computer, making it good Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) medicine for next-generation telehealth systems.

“Scalability is a key factor, especially for lower volumes, and the Qseven standard offers the possibility to use the same baseboard with different processors depending on the user’s needs,” Budelmann says. “Some users only need a small control unit and prefer a simple ARM processor, whereas other customers want to implement large screens and need the graphical power of an x86 system. Of course, this embedded computer can also be the case in medical applications. Even if the baseboard has to be adapted to very special demands, this is less complex than switching from a pure ARM platform to an x86 platform or vice versa. In the majority of cases, only some drivers, such as Ethernet PHY, have to be exchanged whereas the real application software can remain the same.”

refer to: http://smallformfactors.com/articles/qseven-coms-healthcare-mobile/

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Making strides in rugged memory technology

Posted on July 15, 2013 by admin

Memory technology innovations have made a variety of ruggedized options available to embedded system OEMs, including lower-profile module designs, Error Correction Code (ECC), thermal dissipation, extended-temperature operation, and the addition of thermal sensors to monitor module temperature.

Embedded system OEMs look to Double Data Rate type three (DDR3) SODIMM memory modules as the mainstay for rugged embedded system design. Adding to the ruggedness of DDR3 SODIMM is new low-power, low-dissipation DDR3L memory modules, which solve a key embedded system design challenge. JEDEC stipulates that systems running memory beyond +85 °C must double the DDR3 self-refresh rate. DDR3L memory modules resolve the double refresh rate requirement by selecting the lowest total electrical current, incorporating thermal-relief copper pour methodology PCB design, reducing chip count, and utilizing 1.35 V DDR3 Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM). Embedded computer compared to current DDR3 designs, DDR3L memory can save up to +10 °C per module and remove the double refresh rate requirement. Embedded computer Supplier-based testing has shown that depending on the components used, DDR3L modules contribute to significantly reducing power, thereby helping increase performance.

REFER TO: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/ruggedization-memory-module-design/

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Run a scheduled set up for your embedded computer

Posted on July 2, 2013 by admin

The scheduler sets up the order of embedded computer tasks to ensure that a higher-priority task can preempt a lower-priority task to maintain a deterministic response. The most popular scheduling technique is preemptive, prioritized scheduling where tasks can interrupt a lower-priority task and continue execution until finished or until preempted by a higher-priority task. The development tool chain is another big issue in the selection of an OS. Embedded computer developers will spend most of their software design and debug efforts interacting with the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to gain quick access to the editor, compiler, linker, downloader, and runtime tools. Most vendors provide a full IDE including the source code editor, the code manager, links to the compiler and linker, software to download code to the target platform, and one or more debuggers.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/choose-right-embedded-operating-system/

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Data decoding in embedded computer

Posted on June 18, 2013 by admin

Single board computer, Console server, Panel PC

We will need to encrypt data at the object level – pictures, maps, files, and so on. Encrypting at the object level and tagging each object with embedded computer awareness data require strong enterprise key management so data can be securely accessed Embedded Computer anywhere from any device. The data just needs to be locked down embedded computer at the most granular level with the lock being an encryption embedded computer scheme that protects data at the object level.

refer to: http://mil-embedded.com/articles/cloud-security-the-dod/

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Building traceability into an networking project

Posted on May 7, 2013 by admin

Traceability also provides essential project information that often can’t be obtained in any other way. It provides testers with an easily understandable and reportable measure of product quality. By knowing which requirements remain unsatisfied, and whether they have issues logged against them, testers can estimate the time remaining to product completion. Last, traceability enables teams to better understand the work remaining, and in which functional areas of the product that work remains.

Managing requirements, test cases, and defects using Microsoft Word or Excel is challenging enough. But tracing requirements through test cases to defects and back to requirements is impossible without a real tracking system.

 

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/application-testing-traceability-embedded-product-development/

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