ARM Community: Embedded - ARM Community

After a long and bleak winter in the UK it was great to arrive back into San Francisco and be greeted by some great sunny weather. The McEnery Conference Centre in San Jose was once again the host to the Design West conference. The building has had a bit of an overhaul since I was last here, and while there is still some construction work taking place outside, the inside is looking greatly improved with a much more modern feel to it.

The show was pretty mixed in terms of how busy it was on the show floor but I happened across this blog from Max Maxfield (who describes himself is his bio as: “Clive ‘Max’ Maxfield is six feet tall, outrageously handsome, English and proud of it. In addition to being a hero, trendsetter, and leader of fashion, he is widely regarded as an expert in all aspects of electronics (at least by his mother)” over on the all programmable planet website who detailed his busy schedule. Hopefully not everyone is having such a busy time! I’ve been meaning to meet with Max for a while as I find his blogs most entertaining and he is also a fellow Sheffield Hallam University alumni but have never managed to catch up with him – from the schedule I can se...

Phew, the second day of Embedded World is at a close. In yesterday’s blog we had the chance to meet up with Chris Styles from ARM, Terrance Bar from Oracle, Paul Zoratti from Xilinx and Dr. Majd Zoorob from PhotonStar, and I only walked 5793 steps – today I just about doubled that with 10502 steps and I haven’t yet ventured out into the brisk weather for some dinner and a well-deserved Weissbier!


Today I chatted with ...

Near Field Communications (NFC) is becoming more pervasive in our society, driven in large part by NFC chips inclusion on many Android phones. As consumers become more aware of NFC technology, demand for NFC features on a variety of other applications increases. Ticketing, security access, loyalty cards and closed-loop micro systems are just a few examples of applications that are adopting NFC technology.

NXP is the world leader in Near Field Communications, with a full portfolio of secure microcontrollers and a strong innovation pipeline. 1.2 Billion people live in urban areas where NXP’s contactless ticketing solutions make public transit more convenient and efficient, and 200M+ people rely on NXP technology to enter their offices and hotels every day.

In order to help our customers implement NFC in their applications, NXP offers design examples on 3 different ARM® Cortex™-M cores. These 3 examples share a common design “backbone” made up of a contact and/or contactless card reader communicating over a serial port to an ARM microcontroller, which either drives a touchscreen LCD panel for user interface or talks to a PC-based back-end system via UART or Et...

Freescale’s Technology Forum (FTF) has always been one of my favorite conferences to attend, and this year has to be one of the best. The opening keynote from Freescale’s new CEO, Greg Lowe, was jam packed with ARM® processor-based product announcements, so much so that ARM’s CEO Warren East himself decided to make a guest appearance in a show of his support.

I was also very excited to hear the guest speaker this year, Dr. Peter Diamandis CEO of the X Prize Foundation, give his keynote on inspiring innovation. Did you know that the X Prize for a privately owned manned spacecraft was created in 1996, but did not actually have the $10 Million of prize money funded until May 2004? That’s just a few months before the prize was actually won. Interestingly, a total of $100 Million was invested in new technologies as a result of all the teams competing for the prize.

In addition to being a venue for Freescale to demonstrate its own products, FTF also represents an opportunity for Freescale�...

Once upon a time a man named Tim Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web. Actually, what he suggested was the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Just 22 years ago, he established the first link between a computer and a server via http. If you read the proposal, I think you’ll agree that perhaps he had only the vaguest clue what the Web would become, since “addition of graphics would be an optional extra”. Without the Web, the internet would be just a network. Without the internet, there would be no Web.

Based on his brilliant concept and the enabling technology of the Internet, the world passed through a kind of singularity. It was a technical singularity that so remade the world that it almost wiped out memory of what life was like beforehand. A colleague regales his 18-year-old twins with “When I was your age…” stories of pre-Web society and they—in all honesty—admit that they cannot conceive of day-to-day living without ubiquitous access to information at any time, and at any place. The change is that fundamental.

The times they are a changin’ – again. There’s another singularity coming. The Internet of Things will enable it.

Defining the Internet of Thing...

This year’s Design West (formerly ESC) from March 26-29th promises something for every designer with seven different Summits. ARM and its Partners have strong representation at ESC, Android and Multicore. Following on the strong showing at this year’s Embedded World (blog), ESC has over 70 ARM® Partners including nine Partners in the annual ARM Connected Community (CC) Pavilion in the expanded ARM booth #1127.

With the excitement following last week’s ARM Cortex™-M0+ processor launch, the most energy efficient ARM processor available (blog) with lead Part...

The Internet of things (IoT) will provide consumers with an unprecedented ability to control and monitor a wide range of previously “disconnected” end products, as well delivering a generation of “Internet- aware” products with much more sophistication and intelligence. Additionally, it will offer manufacturers a great opportunity to improve customer experience for their products through remote diagnostics and repair, as well as delivery of customized support and maintenance. One thing that is common in the IoT is the pervasive use of microcontrollers, making the IoT a great fit for ARM® processor- based microcontrollers (MCUs).

Among wireless technology options for IoT products, Wi-Fi has unique advantages due to its ubiquity and native IP support. Additionally, the recent explosion of mobile and web apps provide an ideal way to interact with Wi-Fi technology, leveraging the near 100 percent attach rate in smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Why add Wi-Fi to home appliances?
However, manufacturers considering Wi-Fi could still struggle to imagine the exact use cases for adding wireless connectivity ...

With Embedded World only few weeks away, I feel it’s time to have a look at what’s cooking in the ARM kitchen to heighten your senses… In this small article, you will have an overview of ARM and ARM Partners activities taking place in The European embedded show.

Jump to: Map – Drinks & Board – Learn – See

Find ARM Partners on Nuremberg show floor
As we did in previous years, we have prepareda map to accompany you at the show. All ARM Connected Community Partners present at the show should be on the map. You can either print the ARM Partners @ Embedded World map from the PDF or come and pick on up from the ...

电力作为国民经济发展的重要基础性产业和公用事业之一，经济的快速发展给电力行业提出了新的要求。Smart Energy (智能电网) 将引发电力能源的革命，它是新的经济增长点、新能源利用的关键以及节约能源的重要举措。在2009年5月召开的“2009 特高压输电技术国际会议”上，中国国家电网公司正式提出“坚强智能电网”的概念，并计划于2020 年基本建成。国家电网公司提出的这个概念包括以特高压电网为骨干网架、各级电网协调发展的坚强网架为基础，以通信信息平台为支撑，具有信息化、自动化、互动化特征，包含电力系统的发电、输电、变电、配电、用电和调度各个环节，覆盖所有电压等级，实现“电力流、信息流、业务流”的高度一体化融合的现代电网。

对于普通家庭关心的用电系统环节，智能电网的发展目标是最终能够实现电网与用户之间的实时交互相应，用户可以实时了解电价状况和计划停电信息，以合理安排电器使用；电力公司通过智能电表可以获取用户的详细用电信息，以提供更多的增值服务供用户选择。新能源汽车等作为储能设备可以在用电低谷时接纳电网富余电能，并可以与其它小型发电装置一起在用电高峰时向电网输送电能，以达到削峰填谷，减少高峰�...

Day three of ARM Techcon 2011 was a much sunnier affair than the previous day as the record audiences flocked again to the busy exhibition floor and technical sessions – I think it’s time we all agreed that ARM Embedded is moving from ‘the beginning’ (as I alluded to in a blog a year or so ago) to a real player and there is so much more on the way – check out Richard York’s blog on the latest details about Cortex-M success and shipments.

As you may have already seen in the ARM TechCon blog from day 3, the day started off with Mike Muller’s keynote where he introduced 64-b...

The rising complexity of embedded systems continues to drive the need for MCU architectures and development tools that abstract low-level design details and enable developers to quickly bring new products to market. In addition, the shorter lifespan of products on the market requires being able to introduce new products faster with each new generation. To succeed, you must consider not only how long it will take to develop a new product but also how quickly existing products can be adapted to meet the changing needs of customers.

For example, what most customers want today – typically called the sweet spot of the market – shifts every few months. To hold market share, you need the ability to create product upgrades and enhancements across MCU platforms to match these changing expectations. Consequently, even during the design of a new product, engineers already need to take into account what next-generation device requirements are going to be.

Key factors to consider when choosing an MCU include: design reuse, software code compatibility, performance and power, advanced algorithmic-code compatibility, inte...

With the rise of advanced graphics on smartphones and tablets, users are demanding higher quality and faster response times from all user interface displays including industrial products. The simple segment displays for human interface are quickly becoming the minority in all but the lowest cost applications.

Adding an LCD controller to your next design
When choosing a high-performance LCD Graphics controller, designers should consider bandwidth use cases for example how often will the information be refreshed, the use of colors (number of color and depth,) software support that allows a variety of panels to be used and choices of multiple effects to be implemented quickly and easily in the design.

To meet this growing demand for quality displays, NXP has included a high-performance LCD Graphics controller on a number of new ARM Cortex-M3 and ...

Freescale continues to drive innovation through the extension of the Make It Challenge (blog review) that we held at the 2011 Freescale Technology Forum. That challenge was such a success, the new Make It Challenge featuring Kinetis MCUs Americas offers eligible participants the opportunity to develop an innovative embedded application using Freescale Kinetis product families based on the ARM® Cortex™-M4 processor. Semifinalists are awarded $1,000 (US). As well, you have the opportunity to win the $10,000 (US) first prize and a trip to Austin, TX in the USA. Please read the ...

Many recent licensees of ARM Cortex-M are new to the ARM architecture. For them, a design kit that is tailor-made for Cortex-M processors and delivers a short learning curve, reduced time to market and enables their designers to focus on developing features that provide differentiation and value, would be a dream come true! Lo and behold, with the swish of our magic wand and a puff of smoke, ARM has recently delivered the Cortex-M System Design Kit (CMSDK) which delivers all of the above. The kit contains reusable IP, hardware design examples and software examples to enable Cortex-M system designers to develop complex SoC designs and bring them to silicon faster.

The CMSDK package
The CMSDK is available in two editions: the Cortex-M0 System Design Kit, which supports the ARM Cortex-M0 processor, and the Cortex-M System Design Kit, which supports the ARM Cortex-M0, Cort...

What a great start to the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose this week as ARM Cortex technology won a flurry of awards at the 21st EDN Innovation Awards show on Monday night. I was lucky enough to be at the event and, on behalf of ARM, picked up the award for the Best Processor for the ARM Cortex-M4.

The award winning ARM technology came in the form of the EM773 energy-metering IC from NXP Semiconductors which utilises a ...

It’s taken me a whole week to get over the buzz and excitement (and lots and lots of walking between Hall 9 and Hall 12!) that took place at the Embedded World in Nuremburg just over a week ago, although I didn’t have much time to put my feet up as I came straight home to co-present a webinar about the new Cortex-R processors that ARM announced a few weeks prior to the show.

I’ve decided to pull together some of the key stories from the show and also highlight some new videos that ARM did throughout the week and are currently collected together under the Embedded World 2011 playlist on the ARMflix YouTube channel. Look the column on the right hand side for the new clips.

The show looked to be as big a success as ever especially for ARM and the vast array of ...