News Roundup: Eclipse, WinXPe, MontaVista

Over at Eclipse Foundation, the embedded rich client platform (eRCP)project will be joining the DSDP (device software development platform) project. eRCP’s stated mission of extending the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) to embedded devices is a "nice fit with the device software / mobile focus of DSDP," writes DSDP head Doug Gaff in his blog.

Microsoft is helping customers who are having problems installing the Windows XP Embedded database after installing Visual Studio 2005. According to the company, the problem is caused when a default installation of Visual Studio includes a silent installation of SQL Express, which can cause problems with the XPe installation if it’s not configured in a specific way. The Windows XP Embedded team has posted a recommended solution here.

MontaVista Software recently announced the availability of its Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) RTOS for Emerson Network Power, Embedded Computing’s KatanaQp AdvancedTCA blades, and PmPPC7448 ProcessorPMC modules. The company demo'd the CGE software at this week's Freescale Tech Forum. Here's the press release.

Posted at 12:00 PM | Comments

Green Hills Extends Support of Freescale Processors

Out at the Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando, Fla., Green Hills Software today announced expanded support for Freescale's processors. The software company's TimeMachine debugger now works with Freescale processors that lack on-chip trace functionality, a previous limitation. And its micro-velOSity RTOS has been extended to run on all Freescale processors, offering 100% upward-compatible API with Green Hills' other RTOSes, velOSity and Integrity. "We're offering one RTOS family you can migrate within," says Robert Redfield, director of partner business development at Green Hills.

When Green Hills introduced TimeMachine 18 months ago, the debugging tool worked only with Freescale processors that featured on-chip trace pins. Now that limitation has been removed, allowing the TimeMachine to work with Freescale's PowerQuicc family of processors. There is a price, however. Developers will need to add tracing via either an in-memory data transfer or a PCI or other bus; either will involve some overhead, Redfield says.

The micro-velOSity expansion means the royalty-free, small-footprint RTOS now work on additional Freescale processor families, including the MPC555x, MPC85xx, ColdFire MCF54xx, i.MX31 and MAC71xx. Perhaps more important, Green Hills says that APIs and common components (including Ethernet stacks, PCI, and IPsec) are 100% compatible across its three RTOS families. This could appeal to Freescale customers, such as Otis Elevator, that use a wide range of processors on devices that range from simple to complex.

Bolstering the announcements, Green Hills points to a 2005 survey of more than 500 device engineers and managers, conducted by CMP Media (parent company of DSO.com). When asked, "When choosing a processor, what is important?" more than 70% of the respondents answered "software tools." It was far and away the most popular response, outdrawing even hardware price and performance.

Posted at 03:07 PM | Comments

Intel, VW Telematics Partnership

Intel and Volkswagen have reportedly formed an auto-telematics partnership. Executives from the two companies are scheduled to announce the partnership and give a presentation at the Telematics Update Europe show, being held in Berlin on September 5-6, according to the conference organizers.

The two executives are Carsten Bergmann, head of connectivity and computing at Volkswagen of America; and Britta Muzyk, business development manager for car infotainment at Intel Germany, according to Telematics Update. Their presentation will deal with connecting future consumer electronics to vehicles.

As far as I can tell, the Intel-VW telematics partnership has not been previously announced by either company.

You'll find a brief summary of the presentation on this Telematics Update Europe Program. (Scroll down -- it's the fifth presentation listed.)

Posted at 11:27 AM | Comments

Green Hills Expands TimeMachine Support Options

Green Hills today expanded support options for its TimeMachine debugger by announcing TraceEdge-PMC. The new software uses an adapter that connects to a free PMC slot and outputs TimeMachine data to a Green Hills SuperTrace probe, which collects up to 1 GB of data and uploads it to the developer’s workstation, the company says.

TimeMachine is a Green Hills tool suite for developers that lets them visualize and replay their software's execution. The company says this allows bugs and inefficiencies to be easily and quickly eliminated, thereby resulting in higher product reliability and faster time-to-market.

More info from Green Hills here.

Posted at 12:13 PM | Comments

DSO At JVC?

Consumer-electronics supplier JVC has initiated what sounds like a DSO-like project to improve the quality and speed product development of its DVD recorders.

The news was first reported by The Nikkei Business Daily, which said electronics makers were showing slow earnings growth due to problems with embedded software and slow product development.

JVC engineers declined to speak with DSO.com from Japan, but a company spokesperson was willing to confirm the report for us. He also said that JVC's operating-income decrease of 6.9 billion yen (approximately $59 million) in fiscal 2006 were caused, in part, by the "enormous amount of service costs caused by quality issues and the resulting elimination of available models" as well as "lost opportunities for potential sales of LCD TVs due to delays in product development."

The spokesman attributed approximately 22 percent of that decrease — or 1.5 billion yen (approximately $13 million) — to "quality issues and delays in product development."

To address these issues, he added, JVC evaluated the design department's management structure. A director in charge of technologies determined that the solution to JVC’s problem was "quality control management without compromise," the JVC spokesperson told us. As a result, JVC recently created a development process reform team, separate from the development groups, in each product category.

JVC has since created a development process reform team of 50 engineers. Ten members from each of five product categories will manage their respecive technology and development procedures. "The team of design reviewers intends to verify technologies from various angles to prevent design mistakes," the JVC spokesperson said. "These improvements will start in the group that makes camcorders and will then be expanded to all product categories. We are certain that these improvements will boost product quality throughout the entire company."

Posted at 01:45 PM | Comments

Symbian: No IPO Planned, OS Upgrade

Symbian Ltd., the British supplier of the leading smartphone OS, won't be going public anytime soon, according to Reuters. Industry speculation got worked up after the successful IPO by mobile-Linux vendor Trolltech of Norway earlier this month. But Symbian chief executive Nigel Clifford told Reuters: "We don't require any further investments...so there aren't any drivers to do an initial public offering at the moment." Clifford said he was basing his comments on a recent meeting of the full Symbian board.

By way of background, the Symbian OS controlled 65% of the global smartphone market in the first quarter, according to Gartner, followed by Linux with a 26% share and Windows Mobile with 4%. Symbian licensees include Ericsson, Matsushita, Nokia, Panasonic, and Siemens.

Shipments of devices running the Symbian OS rose by 73% in Q1, to reach 11.7 million units, Symbian said in May. At the time, the company also predicted it would maintain this growth rate in coming quarters.

In related news, Symbian Ltd. yesterday announced Symbian OS v9.3, its latest upgrade. Version 9.3 includes incremental enhancements that improve phone performance and reduce time-to-market for handset vendors and mobile operators, the company says. The new OS version is scheduled to start shipping in 2007. More info from this Symbian announcement.

Posted at 02:05 PM | Comments

LynuxWorks Plays With ORB; Enea Gets ISO Certified, High Marks

LynuxWorks earlier this week announced that its LynxOS-178 RTOS now offers complete integration with Objective Interface Systems’ ORB express RT, a COTS object request broker for safety-critical military and aerospace systems. ORB express RT is designed to help software developers simplify the development of distributed software applications, build scalable, efficient and robust applications, and quicken time-to-market. LynxOS-178 RTOS is the first hard RTOS certifiable to DO-178B Level A with support for both POSIX and ARINC 653, LynuxWorks says. More info from LynuxWorks here.

Enea today announced that it has received ISO 9001:2000 certification for its quality management system. Semko-Certification AB, an independent ISO registrar, made the ISO 9001 recommendation and awarded the ISO 9001 certification after performing a week-long audit at Enea offices in the U.K. and Sweden. ISO 9001, by the way, is the international standard for business quality management, encompassing all processes that organizations use to create and control their products and services. More info from Enea here.

Enea's OSE RTOS also received high marks in a recent evaluation performed by Dedicated Systems. The reviewers especially liked OSE's performance, fault tolerance, memory protection, and interprocess communications. More info from Enea here. And if you're willing to register, you can download the full Dedicated Systems report.

Posted at 10:14 AM | Comments

Feature Pack 2007 for XP Embedded Announced

The Windows XP Embedded Team has just announced what they're calling a Technology Preview (that is, not quite beta) release of a feature pack for XP Embedded.

New features reportedly include:
* New filters, including ones for file-based write and registry.
* Native USB boot capability.
* Bug fixes, including Target Designer and CMI.
* New database components.

And, as they say, much more.

To learn more and participate in a pre-release program, check out this blog entry from the XP Embedded team.

Posted at 12:32 PM | Comments

Green Hills Gets Safer; Volvo Gets On Call; Trolltech Gets Public

Green Hills Software says its INTEGRITY and velOSity RTOSes have been certified to Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL3) of the IEC-61508 safety standard. SIL3 is the highest assurance level achievable for an individual software component. The certified INTEGRITY and velOSity operating systems form the core of Green Hills' Platform for Industrial Safety, a package of tools, OSes, services, and middleware aimed at reliability-critical industrial control and automation systems. More info from this Green Hills press release.

On the telematics front, Volvo On Call, which appears to be the first fully-integrated and factory-fitted SOS system for cars, was recently launched in seven European countries: Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Sweden. The car-maker's Volvo On Call service centers are manned 24 x 7. More information here.

Here's a bit more info on that Trolltech intial public offering (IPO), courtesy of the company. The mobile-OS company issued 7.5 million shares, in all. In light of high demand, one of the two underwriters, ABG Sundal Collier, exercised an over-allotment option of 1.125 million additional shares. Of the total number of shares offered, 94 percent have been allocated to institutional investors. The company now has a total of 51.1 million shares outstanding. For background, see this earlier news story: Trolltech Hails Successful IPO.

Posted at 02:56 PM | Comments