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Embedded World Bulletin – March 2011

VDC attended the 2011 embedded world Exhibition & Conference in Nuremberg, Germany March 1st through 3rd. This bulletin presents a summary of the event.

This is the second time VDC Research has attended embedded world and, according to the show closing report, there were over 800 international exhibiting companies and 19,022 trade visitors. Both represent another year of record numbers of exhibitors and visitors participating in the conference.

Not surprisingly given the conference’s location in Germany, many trade show exhibitors used the venue to highlight a number of automotive announcements and reference designs.  From AUTOSAR to infotainment stacks, it was clear that this rebounding industry held particular traction among conference attendees.

Beyond just the automotive market, however, the conference offered an overall atmosphere and buzz of excitement and interest, a dynamic that has been somewhat lacking from many industry events in recent years.  Although the German economy remains stronger than that of many other geographic areas, we expect and hope that this conference’s momentum will carry over to the upcoming Embedded Systems Conferences and spell continued success for the embedded industry at large on the heels of the recent global recession.

The complete press release and more information & downloads for embedded world can be found here.

 

THE “EMBEDDIES” GO TO:

Best of Show

VDC awards our software “Embeddy” best of show to Esterel Technologies for their announcement of SCADE System and SCADE Lifecycle.  We believe that the addition of SCADE System, which targets SysMLEsterel Embeddie based development, will become an increasingly valuable piece of Esterel’s portfolio as a growing percentage of engineering teams attempt to generate higher level designs of entire embedded systems, beyond just the control application modeling that Esterel Studio has been used for historically.  Additionally, the company also announced SCADE Lifecycle, which will serve as the main platform driving integrations between Esterel’s products as well as other lifecycle management solutions such as requirements management tools, for which it announced the availability of SCADE LifeCycle Requirements Management Gateway.

Horable Mention

Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Embedded Compact 7.  In recognition of the growing requirement across embedded device classes for advance used interfaces, the release of Compact 7 includes the addition Silverlight for Windows Embedded UI Framework, based on Silverlight 3.0, which enables developers to create user interfaces via Microsoft Expression Blend 3 and Windows Embedded Silverlight Tools.  The release also included the platform’s first support for symmetric multiprocessing, which should become increasingly valuable as more OEMs look to incorporate multicore processors into the mobile device designs.

 

WALKING THE FLOOR

ALT Software announceda large design win at the conference, stating that it had been selected by Singapore-based Anuva Technologies to provide graphics drivers for their new XMC embedded graphics module.

ARM announced the extension of its Keil MDK-Professional tool suite to support development on its Cortex-M series processor IP.  The company also announced a new licensing agreement with Fujitsu Semiconductor that features its Cortex-A15 processor and Mali graphics.

Coverity, GrammaTech, and Klocwork were also all in attendance highlighting their latest announcements regarding their static analysis technologies and attempting to drive further growth in the EMEA region.

Enea featured two announcements that were both focused on multicore technology.  The first highlighted their support for the Multicore Association’s Multicore Communications API with their LINX middleware.  The second announcement introduced their Enea Multicore Migration Platform (MMP), which is intended to ease the migration of legacy applications from unicore to multicore architectures. 

In addition to the extension of ThreadX’s support for Renesas’ Electronics’ RX600 Series 32-bit microcontrollers,Express Logic introduced downloadable application modules for its RTOS that now allow applications to dynamically receive additional instructions from local mass storage or networks, thus reducing the need to increase software footprint or memory on the end device.

Green Hills Software had several announcements in concert with the conference.  On March 1st, the company announced that its INTEGRITY real-time operating system has been optimized for the Power Architecture Variable Length Encoded (VLE) Instruction Architecture, which is used within the Freescale Qorivva Power Architecture automotive microcontrollers.  The company also launched the Green Hills Platform for Smart Energy, which positions their runtime, development tools, and professional services solutions for this growing sector.

Software and system lifecycle management solution vendor LDRA was also in attendance and featured two announcements, the first of which highlighted enhancements to its TBmanager tool aimed at providing greater traceability and transparency of tests and test plans across the development team and development cycle.  Their second announcement focused on the addition of support for the IEC 61508 and IEC 61508:2010 functional safety standards in which the LDRA tool suite now automatically checks compliance and provides a mechanism for generating automated documentation.

McObect exhibited at the conference and highlighted the use of their XtremeDB and Perst embedded databases across a range of embedded systems.

MKS, which counts automotive OEMs as their leading vertical market customer segment,was also in attendance and featured their Integrity software and system lifecycle management solution.

Oracle also exhibited at the conference, highlighting the use of its Java solutions for embedded and mobile systems development.

Pentek was in attendance and announced enhancements to its ReadyFlow board support package for its Cobalt, Xlinx Virtex-6 based, FPGA module family with the intent of speeding its customers overall embedded system development.

Programming Research (PRQA) announced the addition of a new dataflow analysis module to its flagship QA·C and QA·C ++ toolsets that includes a Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver engine.

Real-time Systems also used the embedded world conference as a venue to highlight their flagship solutions, which include a real-time hypervisor as well as an IEEE 1588 software stack solution.

EDA vendor Synopsys highlighted four different announcements over the course of the exhibition: the support of PCI Express 3.0 by its DesignWare IP, the introduction of Proteus LRC for lithography verification, the availability of a HAPS-600 High Capacity FPGA-Based Prototyping Solution, and their collaboration with Xlinx to product a methodology manual for the FPGA-Based Prototyping of SoC Designs.

SYSGOannounces today the release of version 3.2 of its PikeOS, which extends SMP support from x86 to ARM, PowerPC and SPARC architectures and also includes a new SMP capable Linux Personality, performance improvements, and many enhancements in tools.

Wind River announced a 64-bit version of it VxWorks RTOS, updated certification evidence for the industrial IEC 61508 standard as well as the extension of its On-Board program to a number of new partners.

Other leading embedded systems exhibitors included, Adacore, dSPACE, ETAS, Elektrobit, HP, IBM Rational, IAR, Inchron, Intel, Kontron, LynuxWorks, Polarion, QA Systems, Quadros, QNX, Texas Instruments, Vector Informatik, Willert Software Tools, and many, many others.


ABOUT VDC RESEARCH GROUP

VDC Research Group (VDC) is a technology market research and strategy consulting firm that advises clients in a number of technology markets including: Embedded Software and Tools, Automatic Identification and Data Collection, Embedded Hardware and Systems, Industrial Automation and Control, Mobile and Wireless, and Power Conversion and Control. Using rigorous primary research and analysis techniques, the firm helps its clients identify, plan for, and capitalize on current and emerging market opportunities. We strive to deliver exceptional value to our clients by leveraging the considerable technical, operational, educational and professional experience of our research and consulting staff. During our nearly four decades of ongoing operation, we have had the pleasure of serving most of the world’s leading technology companies, many high-profile start-ups, and numerous blue-chip early and later stage investors. Our products and services consist of research reports, annual research programs, and custom research and consulting services. Founded in 1971, the firm is located in the Boston area. Please visit our Web site at www.vdcresearch.com to learn more.

The Embedded Systems Industry Bulletin is published as part of VDC’s Embedded Software Market Intelligence Service. VDC has been providing embedded systems market intelligence for over 20 years.