ARM Community: Embedded World: Driven by Innovation of ARM Partners - ARM Community

One of the best parts of being on the ARM Connected Community team is traveling to tradeshows to see the new products the ARM Partners have created. Embedded World 2011 (EW2011) has been exciting with all the new ARM Partner announcements. Let me highlight some of my travels through EW2011 with NVIDIA, Toradex, Marvell, Freescale, SRS Labs, Nuvoton; a dinner with the Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) Partners and a party with QNX Software Systems. Find all the ARM Partners at EW2011 with this handy map.

Toradex is everywhere with their SODIMM 'computer'
A recent ARM Partner, Toradex is everywhere with their SODIMM computer. (it’s the form factor). They have Marvell and NVIDIA based single board computers and you’ll see examples at the NVIDIA stand (Hall 9, stand 578) on Tegra in addition to the ARM (Hall 10 stand 343) and Toradex (Hall 9 stand 130, Hall 10 stand 452 and Hall 12 stand 203) stands. The success story that they are demonstrating is that their SODIMM’s are pin-to-pin compatible which allows increased scalability. Starting from an ARM9 equivalent (Marvell implementation) up to dual ARM Cortex-A9, their Tegra 2 Colibri solution allows evolution of the application with needs. One of their customers was using the low end module for helicopter control and, with minimal development and cost, added a camera with wireless transmission to the tasks when they upgraded to the higher end module.



Freescale brings high quality audio to you
At Freescale’s stand (Hall 9 stand 335 and Hall 11 stand 318), stop by and listen to their sound bar based on the ARM Cortex-M4. The Kinetis K40 demo is leveraging the Cortex-M4’s its DSP functions and ARM Partner SRS Labs’ WOW-HD Soundbar audio technology to provide a richer sound to your TV (for instance). To learn more about the capabilities of the Cortex-M4 and other Partners promoting it at Embedded World, see my earlier blog ARM Cortex-M4 Struts its Stuff at Embedded World.



Nuvoton SoC Cortex-M0 developer
The Nuvoton (Hall 9 stand 359) staff traveled from Taiwan and is eager to hear about your ARM Cortex-M0 needs and can even give you some free development kits. Go and meet them and say Alban sent you ;)



CMSIS: easing your MCU development
Taking advantage of the gathering of many of our Embedded Partners, ARM arranged an evening meeting to discuss the current statuses of ARM and the Partners’ CMSIS support. Again this year, we heard from many ARM Cortex-M silicon and tool vendors who are working hard behind the scenes to ease your design with CMSIS: optimizing DSP functions, developing module description models to ease development and allowing end-users to choose the best silicon for their application without having to re-design their software from scratch. For more information on CMSIS and how it can speed your microcontroller development, watch the recent video from DSP concepts.

NVIDIA: All about Tegra
Embedded World isn’t limited to promotion of the ARM Cortex-M processor family. Many of our Partners are also promoting the Cortex-A processor family as well. Given NVIDIA’s recent announcements on ARM; it is not surprising that their stand (Hall 9, stand 578) is dedicated to promoting ARM-based Tegra technology and Tegra 2 products. If you missed the news and Jeff Chu’s earlier blog, NVIDIA announced multiple projects focused on ARM: “Project Denver” at CES where NVIDIA will build their own ARM-based cores combined with their GPU technology to scale up to notebook, workstation, server, and even super computer markets (Jeff Chu’s interview with NVIDIA from CES). At MWC, NVIDIA unveiled their roadmap thru 2014 including a quad core ARM Cortex-A9 based chip codenamed Kal-El. Combined with an updated 12 core GPU, Kal-El increase performance by 5x while not increasing power for similar workloads over Tegra 2 (Katie Morgan’s interview with NVIDIA from MWC).

QNX Night sponsored by ARM and cool demos
As you know, activities at EW2011 are not limited to working at the conference; there’s still some time for fun and enjoying the local city. In the heart of the great old part of Nuremberg, QNX Software Systems and ARM hosted a networking dinner to which many companies attended and discussed their future products. Next year promises to be an even more exciting EW.

Below is a snapshot from the QNX stand that shows their new ARM and Freescale-based medical demo with a pulse oximeter and a blood pressure cuff that the reference design can remotely communicate with a BlackBerry Playbook. Our future visits to the doctor’s office are going to be powered wirelessly. You can also learn more in a blog from QNX.

Also don’t forget to see the iControl Connected Home demo that shows you how home monitoring services can be remotely managed through broadband. The ARM and QNX-based solution brings together interactive touch screens, home management devices and applications, security hardware and more. More details can be found in the blog and video The Low Cost, Mass Market Connected Home is Finally Here



More in store for ARM Embedded
To aid the development of ARM Embedded products, ARM recently launched our newest community focused on Embedded. Here is my colleague’s short introduction of the Embedded community. Please let me know what other news, support or developments that you would like to hear from ARM on Embedded.

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Alban Rampon - 冉昂理, Partnership Marketing Specialist, ARM, is an electronics engineer experienced in Automotive as well as Consumer and Industrial product design. He loves spending a lot of his time helping engineers worldwide with specialist questions in electronics and microcontrollers/networks in particular. Being a keen trainer helps Alban giving straight and understandable answers, always thriving to the highest standard of quality. Today Alban uses both his technical knowledge and customer dedication to develop and strengthen ARM Connected Community relationships. Through networking and promotion, he helps ARM Partners getting successful products to the market. You are very welcome to drop Alban an email if you have any question or wish to report inappropriate content/behaviour on the Forums/Blogs.