Embedded Systems Design - Europe - August/September 2007 - (Page 6)

news TTTech mulls deploying FlexRay beyond automotive TTTech Computertechnik AG (Vienna) plans to widen the scope of time-triggered communications technology beyond its strongholds in automotive, aerospace, and off-highway industries. Industry automation could be another interesting ﬁeld of activity, believes TTTech CEO Stefan Poledna. With the FlexRay bus the most prominent example of time-triggered communication schemes and TTTech being a member of the FlexRay consortium, the automotive industry is something like a natural stronghold to the company. The company supplies components for one of the ﬁrst FlexRay production programs; Poledna now hopes to anchor time-triggered communications also in other markets, including the off-highway vehicle market. Excavators and other construction vehicles could be good instances where FlexRay could be favorably used, said Poledna. According to industry sources, an obstacle however, could be the FlexRay license terms which presently affranchise the system only for automotive use; the IP rights are with the consortium. However, the approval for applications beyond automotive is presently under discussion. Another project the company works on is a highly reliable Ethernet protocol for a variety of aerospace and industrial applications. The company hopes to leverage its background in the aerospace industry - for instance, the new Boeing 787 long-distance cruiser uses a TTPbased data communication platform for several systems. This market is crowded admitted Poledna. “But our experience with high reliable enables us to offer a different approach: Safety, high availability and resilience is a combination that no Ethernet system on the market can offer.” And, of course, real time capabilities. “But real time capabilities is nothing you can differentiate yourself with, this is standard,” Poledna says. “Resilience and high availability, in contrast, is something no other Ethernet ﬂavor presently offers. Resilience and redundancy will be highly sought-after features in future automated assembly lines where in the case of a failure noone can afford to shut down the line completely. Esmertec K.K. and HI Corp to integrate their java tools HI Corporation’s 3D rendering engine MascotCapsule has been integrated on Esmertec AG’s Jbed java platform by Esmertec K.K. The integration provides game developers a platform for creating and deploying 3D games on a broad range of mobile handsets. Esmertec K.K. is the exclusive reseller of Esmertec mobile and multimedia software products in Japan. Esmertec’s (Zurich, Switzerland) Jbed, java virtual machine platform for mobile handsets, has already shipped in over 120 million mobile handsets. MascotCapsule from HI (Tokyo, Japan) is a 3D rendering engine used for creating console-quality, 3D games on mass-market mobile handsets. The MascotCapsule series has been shipped with over 230 million handsets worldwide by the end of December 2006. V3 and its Java API, com.mascotcapsule have been used to develop hundreds of mobile games and the V4 release is compliant with the Mobile 3D Graphics API for Java ME (JSR184) to exploit the power of hardware acceleration. Atmel and French startup develop video SoCs Atmel Corp. and Lead Tech Design SA (LTD), a French startup company specializing in the design of integrated circuits and embedded software, have combined their efforts to develop a video system-on-chip, based on Atmel’s AT91CAP customizable microcontroller and LTD’s hardware and software IP blocks. Under the terms of the agreement, LTD said it would work directly with clients to transform their design speciﬁcations into netlists for the metal programmable portion of the AT91CAP customizable microcontroller, incorporating IP blocks from LTD’s library 6 of video signal processing functions. LTD’s second goal consists in supplying software drivers for the IP blocks and the ARM core. Both parties conﬁrmed netlists would be validated on the AT91CAP emulation board by mapping them onto an FPGA, before being transferred to Atmel for placement, routing, and metal programming of the AT91CAP platform. “We welcome this agreement with Lead Tech Design that enables us to offer a turnkey solution to clients wanting a system-on-chip for video applications with an extremely short development cycle, low development cost and an attractive unit price in volume,” Michel Le Lan, Atmel’s marketing director for ASIC products, observed in a statement. LTD, founded in 2001, is a design center based in Rennes (France) and at the Casablanca Technopark in Morocco. The startup claimed its strategy is to develop embedded software and hardware services around its core business, that of designing complex ASICs and FPGAs. Its domain knowledge covers video processing, consumer electronics, automotive, networking, and multimedia. AUGUST – SEPTEMBER 2007 | embedded systems design europe | www.embedded.com/europe 006_ESDE.indd 6 7/09/07 14:48:43 http://www.embedded.com/europe

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Embedded Systems Design - Europe - August/September 2007

Contents News Cover Feature: Annual Study Uncovers the Embedded Market DSP Serves the Convergence Needs of Small Business Embedded Test Offers Unique Value for Serial I/O The Software Detective: First-Fault Data Capture Boards May Shrink But Performance Doesn't New Products Advertising Contacts

Embedded Systems Design - Europe - August/September 2007

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