Embedded Systems Design Europe - February 2008 - (Page 12)

news Automotive and embedded to dominate DATE 08 The most prominent topics for the DATE 08 conference will be automotive electronics designs and embedded application development. The focus shift mirrors the increasingly ‘European’ character of the event. If one takes the number of paper submissions to the DATE 08 conference program as a measure for the regional and topical distribution of the industry meeting, it becomes obvious that the times are changing: While the U.S. still dominate the conference with 212 submissions, exactly twice as many as runner-up Germany, the trend ﬁgures convey a clear message. The number of submissions from the U.S. declined by 18 percent against the year before while submissions from Germany increased 25 percent. Italy and France contributed 47 submissions each, the U.K. 38 submissions. “In terms of topics, embedded systems are strongly represented, with particular focus on high reliability for hardware as well as for software”, explained Andrew Porter of the Date exhibition secretariat. This topical focus shows how the European semiconductor industry is moving towards a fab lite organization models, while R&D efforts are oriented increasingly towards applications and software. And since the automotive industry is one of the European semiconductor industry’s major clients, automotive topics will be almost ubiquitous during the conference. This application-oriented approach becomes clear by dedicating two entire days in the conference program to automotive (Wednesday) and dependable systems (Thursday). While the organizers expect the number of visitors to their conference program to remain at least stable, the number of exhibitors in the connected trade show has declined from 90 at DATE 07 to, so far, 68. DATE vendor chair Carsten Elgert pointed out that 12 companies are new to the show, mostly start-ups. “If the start-ups were not there, an important visitor attraction would be lacking. It is important to show new developments in order to maintain an edge over the DAC as the other large EDA show.” DATE 08 (www.date-conference. com) will take place from March 10 to 14 in Munich. ZigBee spec gets smart on energy The ZigBee Alliance’s Smart Energy proﬁle offers utilities a global open standard for implementing secure, easy-to-use wireless home area networks for managing energy. In addition, product manufacturers now have a standards-based technology that they can implement to access to a burgeoning marketplace for green products without worrying about interoperability. Utilities can use the standard in applications such as advanced metering, demand response, load control, pricing, and customer messaging programs. The standard provides communication and control for devices such as in-home displays, programmable communicating thermostats, water heaters, lighting, smart appliances, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, plus energy service portals and energy management systems. For a more detailed list see zigbee.org/imwp/download. asp?ContentID=12484. Alliance members are currently building products that will be certiﬁed by the Alliance to support ZigBee Smart Energy include: Cellnet+Hunt, Ember, Freescale Semiconductor, Itron, Tendril and Texas Instruments. Updated card spec provides for power-on boot The MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA) and the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (JEDEC) have jointly published version 4.3 of the Embedded MMC (eMMC) and Card Product Standard. The speciﬁcation marks a step in the evolution of eMMC as a memory technology, providing a standardized protocol for embedding mass storage ﬂash memory on host systems. The new features build on the eMMC standard, which is currently supported by all major handset and navigation product manufacturers. 12 The enhanced speciﬁcation includes two new features for embedded memory applications, power-on boot and explicit sleep mode, which translate to signiﬁcant beneﬁts for the end-user. Power-on boot deﬁnes a way for the boot-code to be accessed by the host controller without an upper-level software driver, speeding the time it takes for a controller to access the boot code. Explicit sleep mode enables the host controller to directly instruct eMMC to enter power-saving sleep mode – an enhancement that has an immediate positive impact on power efﬁciency. The eMMC standard simpliﬁes embedding mass storage ﬂash memory on host systems. The standardized protocol interface offers designers high performance, while keeping complex functional differences among NAND ﬂash suppliers invisible to the host. This differs from conventional architecture where a host system must support NAND products from multiple companies in a generic manner by necessity. The speciﬁcation can be downloaded at http://www.jedec.org/download/ JANUARY – FEBRUARY 2008 | embedded systems design europe | www.embedded.com/europe 012_ESDE.indd 12 8/02/08 11:08:29 http://zigbee.org/imwp/download.asp?ContentID=12484 http://zigbee.org/imwp/download.asp?ContentID=12484 http://www.date-conference.com http://www.date-conference.com http://www.jedec.org/download/ http://www.embedded.com/europe

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Embedded Systems Design Europe - February 2008

Embedded Systems Design Europe - February 2008 Contents ARTEMIS and ENIAC Get Parlimentary Approval Product Teardown Videos Come On Screen Esterel and Abslnt Integrate Products Microsoft Opens Windows to Networked Embedded Applications Trango Embeds Virtualization Tool in Cavium's Multicore CPUs MindTree - ADI Develop Security DVR Platform NXP Extends Deal with ARM to Cover MCUs Automotive and Embedded to Dominate DATE 08 ZigBee Spec Gets Smart On Energy Updated Card Spec Provides for Power-On Boot The Basics of Embedded Multitasking On a PIC Cover Feature: The Art of FPGA Construction Is Symmetric Multiprocessing For You? Accelerating MATLAB Using MEX-Files ARM Provides the Microcontroller Solution Embedded World Advertising Contracts

Embedded Systems Design Europe - February 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.