Wind River Blog Network

Space Junk: collision imminent

2009-07-09T15:00:33-07:00

By Mike Deliman

It was bound to happen eventually. On February 10th two large satellites collided in orbit - Kosmos 2251 crashed into Iridium 33 [spaceweather] [bbc].

Even with sophisticated tracking and modeling mechanisms, two large satellites managed to crash into each-other. On the one hand it's surprising - even the experts all say "unexpected" and "extremely unlikely". On the other hand, there's an awful lot of junk up there. Tools like JTRACK can give you an idea of just how much stuff there is up there. Even just looking at the working satellites alone, it's an awful lot of stuff to keep track of. Add-in the space junk and dead satellites, and amount of stuff to track becomes pretty overwhelming.

Multicore Configurations

2009-06-29T09:37:41-07:00

By Mark Hermeling

Multicore processors (processors with multiple processing cores) are being considered in more and more embedded designs. There are in general two drivers that are bringing people to multicore: performance and/or consolidation.

The performance driver is simple. Many devices need the best performance in the smallest package with the lowest power demands. A multicore processor provides more MIPS per Watt than a single core processor. In 'the old days' performance could be improved by increasing the processing frequency on the processor, but for many designs this is no longer the case. The networking industry especially has been ahead of the rest of the pack in the migration to multicore.

The consolidation driver covers the fact that a (for example) dual core can be used as two single core processors. This means that an old dual processor board or perhaps a dual card rack with one processed per card can be replaced by a single processor with multiple cores. This saves board space, reduces the bill of material and reduces power consumption. Besides consolidating existing processors into a single package, the multicore processor also provides to option of using one or more of the cores to add new functionality to an already existing design.

This is a guest post to How We See Embedded Processing, a blog on EDN.com

Quit Bugging Me: Induction

2009-06-26T10:54:37-07:00

By Mike Deliman

Working on a customer problem once, we had an interesting phenomena. Upgrading a system with a large VME cage and several boards, the customer replaced older processor boards with what were then "new" boards. The old boards ran at (I think) 33 MHz, the new ones at more like 133MHz.

The overall system included motor control functions and sensor feedback, there were D-to-A, A-to-D, and other boards in the system. The problem was, with a straight-and-simple rebuild of software for the new boards, the system was giving anomalous readings. Checking the registers for values from the A-to-D boards, there were numbers showing up that were not possible. Readings indicated the motors were on and moving their load when in fact the motors were not connected. Switching back to the old computer boards eliminated the problem. We added some hardware to examine VME bus activity, to see if the new CPUs were reading the bus wrong. We had to put the test board between the CPUs and the sampling boards.

Serial Intent

2009-06-25T10:50:09-07:00

By Mike Deliman

Howdy out there,

I realize this is a blog that's supposed to be about real-time programming issues, and mostly I've posted about planetary and space based projects, with a few announcements about technology and news items. Though these combine subjects near and dear to my heart (space, and VxWorks), these were mostly "interest stories", not solid real-time issues. (It must be kind of like tuning into a financial news station and seeing stories about some new exotic fluffy breed of dog.)

What's the 4-1-1 on 3.1.1?

2009-06-23T06:01:00-07:00

By Emeka Nwafor

We have just announced that we are taking orders for Wind River Workbench On-Chip Debugging version 3.1.1. Here's some infomation (i.e. "the 4-1-1") on this release. Version 3.1.1 is a significant update to the software and firmware that powers our JTAG debugger units - the Wind River ICE 2 and the Wind River Probe. A couple of the highlights include our support for RMI Corporation's XLR and XLS processor lines, a new capability that strengthens our support for multicore and multithreaded processors. This component of the release was the result of some hard work and great teaming between the folks at RMI, our professional services organization, and our engineering team in Canton. The other thing that has our team excited is that version 3.1.1 introduces support for Intel Architecture starting with support for the Intel Atom product family. Intel Architecture support in our on-chip debugging solutions extends our existing coverage for ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC. These different architectures are supported using firmware updates to the same physical hardware - this is something that our clients have told me that they appreciate since the same debug solution can be used across multiple projects in there heterogeneous environments. I tend to feel a certain amount of pride everytime we execute a new release, but I'm particularly proud and nostalgic about this release. I'm proud because our clients are jazzed that we are expanding our optimized-for-multicore JTAG debugging solution to the Intel Architecture and are pleased that we have a non-intrusive debug solution for Intel that helps to abstract the debugging of operating systems and the stuff running on them - including operating systems like VxWorks and Wind River Linux.

OpenSAF 3.0 released

2009-06-22T10:54:10-07:00

By Hans Juergen Rauscher

Last week OpenSAF released its 3.0 version of the high-availability framework.

This release is the second (counting from v2.0 onwards) during its lifetime, took about 1.5 years and shows the strong and continuing support from contributors such as Wind River Systems, Inc.

Targeting Your Assets

2009-06-19T16:58:46-07:00

By Paul Henderson

Embedded folks know that managing your target device is a key part of the development process. While you can do a lot on the host, the 'rubber meets the road' when you run your software on the actual target hardware at full speed.

Developers using IDE's like Wind River Workbench have a nice target management environment that fully supports cross development. But testers don't have this luxury. In testing, the whole process of managing devices is slow and painful.

Most companies have a lab full of equipment covering new and old devices of all configurations. Often with new devices, the prototype hardware needed by the team is scarce and expensive. Plus, these labs are spread across the world -- Americas, Europe, China, India.... How do you know where the equipment is, and how do you get access to the device or board you need remotely - now?

First Light, First Flight

2009-06-18T16:24:04-07:00

By Mike Deliman

Kepler Space Telescope recently had it's First Light images released! Just how many stars do you think Kepler is watching every day and night?

This star in the circle is TrES2, a star known to have a planet around it. It's in a cluster of stars known as NGC6791. Zooming out more, here's an inverted-image of Kepler's entire field of view. How much of the field of view do you think was in that second picture?

What would the IDE look like if invented today?

2009-06-17T12:04:52-07:00

By Doug Schaefer

I just finished reading a great analysis of Google Wave by Redmonk's Stephen O'Grady. Ever since seeing him present at an Eclipse board/council meeting, I've been following his blog. Highly recommended if you're interested in a great perspective on what's really happening in the enterprise open source world.

As I was reading it, I was struck by what Lars Rasmussen said at the beginning of his keynote on Wave at the Google IO conference: "What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?". Well, apparently they've ended up with an open, extensible framework for hosted collaboration systems that seemlessly merge IM, e-mail, and documents into a single interactive workflow. Wave has really impressed me as a significant step in the evolution in the way we communicate on the web.

Virtually... Not Yours

2009-06-16T14:28:39-07:00

By Mike Deliman

So with all this virtualization going on, one computer can run multiple copies of an OS (or multiple OSs), all acting like they own the whole computer. With only some fancy shim layer keeping them from corrupting themselves and everything else, what are the implications for security? Security is an issue that has been raised more frequently as computers have become more powerful and the network more pervasive. I mean, viruses spread fast enough when the World Wide Web was mostly single computers with modems dialing up to servers. In this day of broadband everywhere and constant connections, doesn't virtualization present a special problem? Doesn't a machine running 10 virtual servers just mean that a virus gets to invade 10 servers for the price of entering one machine? Let the SPAM flow! NOT!