Joe Alderson reports from Embedded World 2012 in Nuremberg:

With a rare chance to leave the Farnell/element14 stand and take a trip around the rest of the exhibition, the final day of Embedded World 2012, intended for students and academics, really brought home the incredible level of knowledge among young engineers who are just finishing university and heading out into the work-a-day world.  Young engineers were present at many of the stands, demonstrating proficiency with the applications they were showcasing. Many of them had started with simple 8-bit MCUs, using boards like the Arduino Uno, and were now experts working with products from ARM, Intel, AMD, Microsoft and too many others to list.

Looking at the young people at Embedded World I was reminded that society has now seen multiple generations of computer gamers and, I’m relieved to say, these gamers have left a positive impact on today’s technology. One outgrowth of gaming-driven technology could be seen in the Microsoft exhibit, where the Xbox manufacturer was demonstrating projected touch screen technology (think of the film Minority Report), while plenty of the autonomous RC cars demonstrated elsewhere ran real-time 3D models and transmitted back camera feed from multiple angles.

One of the many great student projects that I saw included object recognition and augmented reality gaming, where real world objects were used as walls in virtual games with computer generated balls bouncing between them. Other young engineers, this time having constructed a giant chess playing robot guided by ultrasound, were keen to demonstrate how they had integrated Atmel’s 8-bit MCU and ubiquitous demo board (I’ll leave you to guess which one) into the motor control system.

As I checked out more and more development boards, their increasing level of connectivity really struck me and it’s no surprise that the Embedded World internet backbone was creaking under the weight of many thousands of web-connected demo boards, laptops and mobile devices. A mighty download speed of 9 kb/s made it quite challenging to get a true measure of the functionality of some of the more powerful development kits as they were running apps that relied on APIs from various Internet locations. However, given the popularity of touch screens (both capacitive and resistive) across so many different applications, I think it’s safe to say that the next 2 – 3 years will see massive growth in every day devices making use of this technology.

At the Philips stand, even the humble washing machine was interfaced with wireless connectivity and a touch screen in order to monitor and improve motor efficiency. I’d initially thought that the idea would be to implement smart control of the washing machine so that it could be activated remotely, but the real goal was increasing energy efficiency and extending the product’s life span.

This drive towards energy efficiency and green technology really impressed me at Embedded World this year, with many of the exhibiting companies placing emphasis on what you can do with only a couple of Watts, rather than what you can do by cramming a massive heat sink on your processor. Of course for this reason ARM seemed to be everywhere at Embedded World 2012. From the autonomous Zeppelin circling above the press area to the smart vending machine on the ARM stand to well over half of the development boards that we were showcasing, ARM cores were the most outwardly obvious sign of the emphasis shifting from energy hungry processors to silent, powerful and well designed cores.

So back in November 2009 I posted an article about my starting to play around with RTOS to grow in my technical knowledge. I must confess something: I haven’t really played with MQX or others as much as I would have liked…at least not during 2010. But then something happened: Freescale’s Kinetis family of ARM microcontrollers was launched and now my worked has forced me (in a good way) to work with the MQX RTOS quite a lot more. It’s been great fun.

In my self-training of MQX I’ve run into basically two ways of doing things. One way is to subdivide all functions into tasks, using all sorts of RTOS goodies like semaphores, priorities and mutexes (is that the right plural? How about mutexii?). This way, as far as I understand RTOS, is the right way to do it, it’s elegant.

Continue reading on EmbeddedStories blog

Going into the 2011 Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley I was looking forward in particular to seeing and hearing more about new MCUs and ecosystem developments.

The show did not disappoint.

If there was one product to capture “best in show” honors a good argument could be made on behalf of TI’s MSP430FR57xx, a 16-bit microcontroller said to be the industry's first low power ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) MCU. TI has been working on FRAM technology for about a decade, but this is the first time that the memory has been integrated into a microcontroller. The new MCU is said to reduce active power by up to 50 percent when executing code from FRAM,  operating at 100 µA/MHz in active mode and 3 µA in real-time clock mode.

What’s more, the on-chip FRAM allows data retention in all power modes, supports more than 100 trillion write cycles, and allows developers to partition data and programming memory with changes in software.

For product designers, the new technology provides the ability to deploy and monitor sensors for years at a time. TI engineers foresee it being used on many of the country's 600,000 bridges, or on other types of remote structures where safety and security is critical.

Microchip Technology has expanded its 8-bit Enhanced Mid-range Core product portfolio with the new, PIC16F1516/7/8/9 and PIC16F1526/7 (PIC16F15XX). MCUs. These new, general-purpose MCUs feature Microchip’s eXtreme Low Power (XLP) technology—for sleep currents down to 20 nA, and active currents less than 50 micro Amperes/MHz, according to the company—which lowers overall power consumption and extends battery life.

This MCU family offers 5V operation, which is important for many home appliance and automotive applications. An on-chip, 10-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with up to 30 channels enables more mTouch capacitive touch-sensing keys and sliders in smaller packages. Up to two each of EUSART, I²C and SPI ports enable communication with on-board peripherals. The new MCUs are available in 28-, 40-/44- and 64-pin packages.

Renesas Electronics America announced new support for its RL78 microcontroller family including compiler support from IAR Systems, real-time operating systems (RTOS) from Micrium and CMX Systems, and Wi-Fi (802.11n) support from Redpine Signals. IAR Systems' Embedded Workbench provides an optimized C and C++ compiler for the RL78 MCU family and supports the E1 on-chip debugger and IECube in-circuit emulator tools, both from Renesas Electronics. Additionally, the Embedded Workbench comes bundled with C-SPY real-time debugger, and the instruction simulator.

Micrium's compact and scalable µC/OS-II and µC/OS-III kernels have been ported to the RL78 family of processors so power-sensitive and environmentally conscious applications can further benefit from Micrium's µC/OS-II's and µC/OS-III's ability to enter the RL78 MCUs' SNOOZE and HALT modes when idling.

Similarly CMX Systems has ported its CMX-RTX operating system to Renesas Electronics' RL78 MCU family and Renesas and Redpine Signals have jointly developed 802.11a/b/g/n wireless-connectivity solutions to add low-power, single-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi capability to embedded systems that use Renesas Electronics' RL78 MCUs.

Contest Winners, Too

At ESC STMicroelectronics and EE Times  announced the winning design of the STM32 Design Challenge. Community members rated and voted from an original pool of nearly 200 designs submitted in the competition. Winners were chosen from ten finalists with the most imaginative and innovative solutions using the STM32 Discovery Kit, which was given away free to registered contestants.

Taking the title of Grand Prize Winner was Nghia Tran with Navicane, a talking navigation cane intended for use by visually impaired individuals. The goal of the design was to provide navigation information via audible messages and haptic feedback, helping users localize where they are and where they are headed, while improving overall mobility and decreasing dependency upon other resources. Included in this design were a magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensor, GPS, light and temperature sensors, audio codec and more. Mr. Tran was awarded $3,500 in addition to a free conference pass to attend ESC.

Honorable Mentions include the Delta Robot Clock by Justin Smith, a standard digital display on the end actuator of a delta robot; the eDiaper by Lakshmi Balasubramanian, an intelligent and hygienic moisture detection unit that alerts caregivers when to change a diaper; and a House Wide Audio System by David Erickson that included 8 inputs and up to 8 channels. Each Honorable Mention recipient received $1,000.

Freescale Semiconductor took the occasion of ESC to announce its “Make It Challenge”. Engineers enter the contest by enrolling in a hands-on workshop, where they receive a free biped robot replete with Freescale sensors and they are tasked with creating a unique mechatronics application. There is a $12,000 contest purse.

The Freescale Robot (FreeBot) is a 4-degree-of-freedom biped walking robot controlled by a Tower mechatronics board housing a 32-bit ColdFire microcontroller, 64k of RAM and 512k of flash. Four pulse-width-modulated RC servos work the leg mechanics for the FreeBot, with accelerometer, touch and other Freescale Xtrinsic sensors available via plug-in daughterboards.

The Make It Challenge live competition will take place at the Freescale Technology Forum, slated for June 20-23 in San Antonio.

Wozniak Assails U.S. Education

In a fireside chat format Q and A session with Brian Fuller of EE Times, Steve Wozniak, one of the original co-founders of Apple delivered the keynote at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) and was highly critical of the American education system, particularly math, science and engineering education, suggesting at one point that that the American public schools had outgrown their usefulness.

Wozniak, currently chief scientist at Fusion-io, described American education as stagnant, testing-obsessed and destructive of creativity. He said children in American schools, crowded into large classes, where they are pressured to complete and pass statewide and national standardized tests. “They’re not allowed different ways to think” he said adding that they become discouraged. Wozniak said his own children had attended public schools, but conceded, “I actually think home-schooling is very, very good as an alternative” and suggested that middle-class parents send their children to private schools.

Wozniak noted that over an eight year period during his career he spent some eight years “secretly” teaching at the middle and high schools levels

.

CRISP has developed a multi-core processor that will test and repair itself, sort of. There is an on-board resource manager that will test to see if a core is malfunctioning, and if so, send the tasks to a functioning core. The idea is to create a chip that will always work 100% of the time regardless of internal component failures. ‘‘Because of the rapidly growing transistor density on chips, it has become a real challenge to ensure high system dependability. The solution is not to make non-degradable chips, it's to make architectures that can degrade while they keep functioning, which we call graceful degradation. With the right dependability infrastructure many-cores can be a solution', says Hans Kerkhoff accociate professor at the University of Twente.

Still in the design, prototype, stage, this technology may very well be the standard future of chip design. My old critic is what is the "resource manager" gets corrupted due to a bad core? I'm sure more details will emerge over time on how they will handle such events.

CRISP stands for Cutting edge Reconfigurable ICs for Stream Processing. It is a collaborative effort from the University of Twente, Tampere University of Technology, Thales Netherlands, Recore Systems, Atmel, and NXP at the moment.

Eavesdropper

Missouri University of Science and Technology is resolved to make a handheld scanner that can see through anything. Similar to airport scanners, this hand held camera used millimeter and microwave signals to peek inside. In real time, this camera takes 30 frames per second and can construct a representation of objects at different layers. No word on the depth it can go, but the team calls it “non-intrusive.” Originally conceived Dr. Reza Zoughi in 1998, the first prototype was made in 2007. Since then the design has been made smaller and more portable. Currently the system runs off of a battery about the size of a laptop power cell. Zoughi said about the product’s future, “Further down the road, we plan to develop a wide-band camera capable of producing real-time 3-D or holographic images." As of 2010, this concept is patented. At the moment, objects to be scanned have to pass between the camera and a backplane. The team is hard at work to eliminate the pass through feature and just make it a camera. Although modesty will soon be a thing of the past, it is an impressive achievement.

Eavesdropper

Graphene molecular model image.

A new transistor made from graphene, the world's thinnest material, has been developed by a research team at the University of Southampton. The new transistor achieves a record high-switching performance which will make our future electronic devices, such as PDAs and computers, even more functional and high-performance. “Silicon CMOS downscaling is reaching its limits and we need to find a suitable alternative. Other researchers had looked at graphene as a possibility, but found that one of the drawbacks was that graphene's intrinsic physical properties make it difficult to turn off the current flow,” said Dr. Zakaria Moktadir of the Nano research group at the University. Dr. Moktadir discovered that by introducing geometrical singularities (such as sharp bends and corners) in bilayer graphene nanowires, the current could be turned off efficiently. According to Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, Head of the Nano group, this engineering approach has achieved an on/off switching ratio 1,000 times higher than previous attempts. “Enormous effort has been made across the world to pinch off the channel of GFETs electrostatically, but the existing approaches require either the channel width to be much narrower than 10 nanometres or a very high voltage to be applied vertically across bilayer graphene layers. This hasn't achieved an on/off ratio which is high enough, and is not viable for practical use,” he said. Dr Moktadir developed this transistor using the new helium ion beam microscope and a focused gallium ion beam system in the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, which has some of the best nanofabrication facilities in the world.

Zero

Gallium nitride material holds promise for emerging high-power devices that are more energy efficient than existing technologies, but these GaN devices traditionally break down when exposed to high voltages. Now researchers at North Carolina State University have solved the problem, introducing a buffer that allows the GaN devices to handle 10 times greater power. Previous research into developing high power GaN devices ran into obstacles, because large electric fields were created at specific points on the devices’ edge when high voltages were applied, effectively destroying the devices. NC State researchers have addressed the problem by implanting a buffer made of the element argon at the edges of GaN devices. The buffer spreads out the electric field, allowing the device to handle much higher voltages. The researchers tested the new technique on Schottky diodes and found that the argon implant allowed the GaN diodes to handle almost seven times higher voltages. The diodes that did not have the argon implant broke down when exposed to approximately 250 volts. The diodes with the argon implant could handle up to 1,650 volts before breaking down. “By improving the breakdown voltage from 250 volts to 1,650 volts, we can reduce the electrical resistance of these devices a hundredfold. That reduction in resistance means that these devices can handle ten times as much power,” said Dr. Jay Baliga, Distinguished University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State.

Zero

Later this year, Hewlett-Packard researchers say, they expect to deliver to the U.S. Army a working prototype of what they're calling a "Dick Tracy wristwatch" — a lightweight, wearable device that soldiers in the field can use to view digital maps and other data on a flexible plastic screen that won't shatter or crack like glass. Though it will be spartan by design, researchers say HP's prototype could be one of the first in a new wave of products incorporating flexible electronic displays. Freed from the constraints of a rigid glass screen, designers could one day build flexible plastic displays into clothing, wall coverings and perhaps even e-readers or tablets that can roll up like a newspaper. The process starts with rolls of plastic that has been treated with thin layers of metal and other material. The plastic is run through a press that imprints a microscopic, three-dimensional pattern, which can then be etched to create transistors on the film. These can transmit instructions to electrically charged particles or diodes contained in a second layer of plastic, which then displays text or images. Other groups in Taiwan and elsewhere are developing manufacturing processes in which layers of transistors are laid down on sheets of plastic temporarily bonded to a pane of glass. For more information please visit: http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_17087989?nclick_check=1

Eavesdropper