Avoid Ostrich Behavior, Understand RTOS POSIX Standards

Recently I saw that many naive users are using a proprietary real-time kernel. It makes no sense to me and I really wondered why. I've been trying to get more data on this and it seems that it based on ostrich theory.

http://www.embedded.com/224201284?cid=NL_embedded


MCU developers need a real-time kernel and simply follow others into a poor solution because this solution is free to download. Users completely fail to understand the real costs associated with a choice like this, largely because they don't understand the economics and don't think about better alternatives. (Learn more)



First, standards like POSIX mean that you can hire people that know how to use it right away; actually, most well educated engineers on you staff will already know this and have used it. In terms of both cost and risk, POSIX offers a significant reduction. Every major OS now uses POSIX as an API. All the RTOS solutions that run with an MMU also use this as an API simply because it reduces cost and risk. POSIX is the mainstream of APIs for RTOS.

For RTOS solutions without an MMU, there is a variety of choices for POSIX based solutions. Generally the RTOS vendors push their proprietary solutions to lock people in; however, they are available in POSIX flavors, albeit with a performance hit.

There is no reason you can't use POSIX.

Second, if you move to a proprietary solution you loose the ability to reuse software easily. With a non POSIX RTOS you must do extensive work to make it operational on your system. Why would you intensionally create extra cost and risk for current and future development on your project? It makes no sense.

Third, all MCUs now come with source code to support peripherals. In the Unison environment, it is fast and easy to port any driver source code that is well done to Unison or DSPnano. It is so inexpensive that we offer this service at the cost of a single license; provided the vendor has quality code to port. If you don't want us to do it, you can do it yourself. This means drivers are not a risk item as they have been in the past.

Forth, ease of use is very important to get up and going quickly. In the Unision and DSPnano world, the Quick Start Guide gets you up and going with eight to twelve demos (FREE version) in less than 10 minutes each. Many drivers are out of the box and no development is required. Typically Unison and DSPnano come with complete API documentation and eight to twelve demo programs (commercial version has 33+ demos) with a detailed Quick Start Guide which covers all demos and options.

Fifth, optimization to meet real-time needs is one of the most expensive things that you can do as a developer. For this reason, you want a very fast RTOS (with POSIX standards). Unison and DSPnano are the equal of the fastest MCU RTOS on the market and substantially better than most. Simply by choosing this solution, you have reduced your risk and increased your chances for success substantially.

http://www.embeddedstar.com/weblog/2008/01/31/express-logic-threadx-mcu/


Sixth, DSPnano and Unison are FREE for version 4. All of these benefits are completely FREE without cost or risk. Do some research and get the very best free solution that you can. An ostrich avoiding threats in the environment is not a pretty site.

Try here for DSPnano and Unison.

Proprietary Lock in With Software

The other day I became aware that a vendor with a proprietary RTOS for MCUs is busy locking in clients with full featured but proprietary offerings. They are doing so with the help of a major semiconductor vendor. The typical asking price is $120 000 US for the license. There is another vendor that does the same thing with a $65 000 license but without the semiconductor vendor.

Can you imagine finding out two years later that you were completely locked in to a set of APIs that everyone else in the industry is abandoning? When they discover that they can't hire trained people and can't easily reuse software that their competitors can, how will they feel. For good reason, the customers will be pissed.

I don't know what the semiconductor vendor is thinking. They will surely loose customers as they shoulder the blame months later.

The customers of the 65K product can only blame themselves.

Who works on SuperBowl Sunday?

I was surprised today. I was expecting to be one of the very rare few online responding to emails and was shocked to find colleagues working too. You know who really gets things done when their work week starts on Sunday afternoon or evening.

I could name all the people that I knew that weren't working but I'd much rather give credit to those that were.

• Reed Hinkel - TI
• Kevin King - Renesas
• Ellen Miller - Ellen Miller and John Lindsay, Chartered Accountants
• Polly Yuehe - LED Lighting Manufacturing
  
• Terry Higgins - Aviaeology
  

Great job one and all!

SH2A - A Killer MCU

Recently we had requests for SH2A from Renesas. It has a single chip version with both Flash and SRAM and a 200MHz clock delivering 480 Dhrystone MIPS per MHz.

There is SH versions with an MMU and external memory. They run some POSIX or Linux Operating system; however, versions can't run the single chip version without external memory.

On the other hand, Unison is tiny and offers all the same standards. Along with this small size it has great performance for a SoC MCU without external parts. The hardware interrupt mechanism has bank register switching with multiple banks for lighting fast interrupt processing. It is very impressive.

In addition SH2A has great hardware floating point on board for some versions and hardware fixed point on all versions. It should be a great signal processing and communications engine.

For any high end application short of video compression, this looks like a great choice. If you haven't looked at SH2A yet, and you need a high performance MCU, it is difficult to go wrong here.

Wireless Everywhere - Even Power

It is a very exciting time. Twenty years ago I was discussing wireless with a colleague (Spruce Riordon, VP At Carleton University) and we concluded that everything needs to be wireless - even power.

Now, looking back, we are there. There is wireless communications on virtually all devices if you want it and today there is wireless power pads and even wireless room power.

Today, Unision and DSPnano are being refined with various wireless communication options including bluetooth and wifi. Low cost wireless for data channel communication is expected too.

Along with this wireless communication comes power on self test (POST), diagnostics, and flash downloading and updates. Today, virtually all products are expected to maintain themselves in the field with some operator intervention. Just like wireline systems do today, wireless systems will have to offer this in the future; however this update represents more of a challenge in wireless (extra size, security issues, ...).

Unison is ideally suited for applications like driving power pads; however, I wonder how safe they really are. A pad with localized magnetic induction for power is not a problem as long as the field is weak; after all we live in a constant magnetic field created by the earth. I do wonder about the effects of these magnetic fields at the room level.

Why do crops grow poorly near power lines? This is a well known phenomena. The fields must be partially responsible (both magnetic and electric). Have we really thought this out? Show me five independent studies that demonstrate that it is 100% safe and then I'll consider wireless power for my home. Its time we added responsibility for people's health to the list of design requirements for all of these devices that substantially alter our environment.

LED lighting control is a very hot area!

Lighting control is a very hot area and in particular in office environments. It has the capability to reduce lighting costs by 70% or more simply by doing intelligent things like managing external light sources (light harvesting), managing local lighting (individual control in office environments), and providing fast and easy installation.

How does all this work? Well first, LEDs are longer lasting and more efficient. This means that users immediately benefit from energy savings. Second, by putting in wireless networks, local control of lighting can be a simple system feature. It can support control from desktop or notebook computers, cell phones and universal remote controls. It can also support wall controls and sensors where ever the user chooses to place these controls.

The big benefit from the wireless control aspect in retrofit office environments means that the installation cost is much lower. Contractors can simply install new fixtures and the wireless connections provide control while the existing power is supplied as before. A building control system might want to control floor level switching of power while the local control can be done by computers, cell phones, wireless wall panels and remote controls. This reduces the installation cost by 50%.

RoweBots operating system solutions have all the necessary pieces to support this approach, allowing users to quickly and easily develop wireless LED lighting systems using minimal MCU or microcontroller hardware. It includes complete networking, low cost networking options, fat file system and much more.

Microcontrollers Everywhere

We have been making good progress porting our Ultra Tiny Embedded Linux compatible solutions to new MCUs. During the past months we released:

• R8C
• M16C
• R32C
• Arm Cortex M3 for TI Stellaris

It has been very rewarding to see all these components come to market.

In addition we've added a number of new components which have not been released yet. These components are geared towards adding low cost networks and networking to building automation, shipboard automation, and home automation applications. They are intended to support features like fat file system integration to allow developers to work in pc environments and have supporting tools to move files back and forth and set up high quality user interfaces.

Other steps are being taken to support automotive and automotive networks more thoroughly.

In all it has been a good few months for component based designers: there is many new options here. Our ultra tiny embedded Linux is more complete and moving to many more platforms. New add on components are cutting time and effort for users.