Jessica Schieve

Service-enabled gateways – The heart of the connected home

As we ring in the new year, 120,000+ people will descend on Las Vegas for the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show.  The drumbeat to promote the next hot mobile or consumer device, application, and technology, is in full swing.  The industry will be abuzz with press releases, product announcements, and new partnerships.  And, yes, Wind River is gearing up for CES too. If you want to chat with us, give us a shout and we can definitely make time. 

This year, Wind River and Mindspeed have teamed up to deliver a turnkey high-performance reference platform to speed the development of service-enabling gateways. Gateways are quickly becoming the control point to manage broadband content and services. They are truly becoming the heart of the connected home.

At the show, we'll be demonstrating our integrated hardware and software solution, which includes Wind River Linux with middleware and software technologies for TR069, DLNA, OSGi, VoIP and ZigBee. This software bundle has been optimized for Mindspeed’s C1000 packet processor. Customers can use this turnkey platform to build intelligent gateways that will enable multiple broadband services including home automation capabilities. You can check out our gateway solution on the show floor in the Mindspeed booth in the South Hall room #MP25822.  Or, you can request a private demonstration of the solution in our suite at the Las Vegas Hilton (Suite 1849/50/51).  If you visit with us in our suite, you can also get a demonstration of the latest solutions for Android-based mobile devices and automotive infotaintment systems.  Schedule a meeting with Wind River and learn more about what we’re showing at CES.  

See you in Las Vegas!

The Two Ends of the Developer Spectrum: Cool Apps and the Network

I just spent the day at the Intel Developer Forum, where I listened in on Renee James’ keynote address on the Intel user experience. The presentation covered many topics, but the two of most interest were Intel’s AppUp program and Wind River Network Acceleration Platform. At first glance, these two topics seem at opposite ends of the developer community, but they are actually very closely connected. 

On one side of the developer community is the AppUp program. AppUp is designed to enable the development of applications for mobile and other intelligent connected devices. These applications come in many shapes and forms: social media, video, gaming, and financial transactions, to name a few. They are all being developed to run on the Intel Atom processor. Many of the applications are being designed to leverage wireline and wireless broadband to the networks.

Now enter the other side of the Intel developer community: applications for the network infrastructure. All those bandwidth-intensive applications being developed through the AppUp program need the network to deliver their content reliably, securely, and at lightning speed. This is where AppUp meets Wind River Network Acceleration Platform.

On main stage today, Ms. James highlighted a major breakthrough in packet processing performance. Utilizing a new packet processing paradigm, Wind River Network Acceleration Platform, running on Intel Xeon processors, can deliver 10.5 million packets per second per core. Even better, this unmatched packet acceleration solution scales linearly across all cores. This means ultrafast performance to deliver all that content developed by the AppUp applications.  

Check out this animation from today’s presentation.

Coming full circle, the main stage presentation on the Intel user experience shined a spotlight on two opposite ends of the developer community: end user application development and the network applications that will deliver the ultimate connected user experience. 

My Top 8+ Tweets From The 2010 Embedded Systems Conference

I just spent the last four days in San Jose at the 2010 Embedded Systems Conference.  If you are in the embedded industry this is a one-stop event to find information, products, and assistance to help with your next project.  I attended sessions, walked the show floor, talked to vendors about new products, met with partners, and discussed emerging trends with Editors.  I was so busy I actually didn’t have time to tweet about all the great things I saw.  Instead, I’ve compiled a list of the top 8+ tweets I intended to send but I just couldn't condense my thoughts down to 140 characters.

1. Wow – I actually saw lines to get into some of the sessions.  The economy must be getting better because the Embedded Systems Conference had a good turnout from both exhibitors and attendees.  I met with one of the show organizers who told me paid attendance was up 30%.   New and existing projects are on the move and people are looking for embedded technologies to help get their products to market.  Social media was heavily used by the event promoters to get the word out.
2. Multi-core is a hot topic.  There were several specific multi-core events that drew big crowds.  Wind River was involved in three multi-core specific events on day one.  All three events generated a lot of interest.
   
   • First, Wind River hosted an executive luncheon and multi-core panel featuring the six leading semiconductor companies: Cavium, Freescale, Intel, LSI, NetLogic, and Texas Instruments.
     These guys went head-to-head discussing why their approach is best.  One clear message from all the panelists was that optimized software and tools play a major role in realizing the full potential of multi-core processors.  Too bad we ran out of time because the audience was fired up with questions.
   • The luncheon was followed by a keynote from Wind River’s CTO, Tomas Evensen.  Tomas’ presentation - Surviving the Software Avalanche: Simplifying Multi-core – Everyone from the luncheon must have followed Tomas over to the Hilton because this session attracted a lot of people wanting to learn more about emerging embedded software and tools.
   • During the afternoon Wind River’s multi-core expert, Mark Hermeling, conducted a four hour working session on Multi-core Demystified.  This interactive session was packed.  The audience was very curious about the different elements to multi-core development.  Many questions were asked and answered.  What’s amazing is that the majority of the audience stayed the entire four hours.
3. Integrated solutions are in demand.  Piecing things together is NOT what the industry wants to do anymore.  The introduction of multi-core has made development of embedded systems much more complex.  On the first day of the show Wind River announced a new integrated multi-core runtime platform, the Network Acceleration Platform . The platform offers all the software components needed to develop a network element that delivers ultra-fast packet forwarding capabilities.    I had a number of people comment that this was exactly what the industry needs.
4. System simulation is generating a lot of interest.  A few weeks ago Wind River added the Virtutech Simics product to its portfolio.  Multiple hardware vendors stopped by the booth to get a hands on demo.  At times the audience was three groups deep.  As embedded systems get more complex, more and more designs will be done in a simulated or virtual environment.  Imagine the flexibility and added freedom to design the next generation applications without being tethered to physical hardware.
   
5. Ecosystem alliances are on the move – a number or companies announced new ecosystem alliances.  Freescale jumped out of the gate by announcing a new strategic alliance that expands software solutions on their processors.  They were followed by NetLogic’s announcement of Ensemble, an alliance to drive multi-core innovations around their processors.  These alliances tie directly to the above point that integrated solutions are what customers are asking for.
6. Xilinx is on a roll.  They started by winning top honors in the annual EDN Innovation Awards. Then they then unveiled a new ARM-based processing architecture that offers high-performance processing horsepower at lower cost and power targeting multiple market segments.  I talked to some of the Xilinx folks about there new project and left thinking – wow - these guys are on to something! 
7. Me Too Android!  Android is attracting a lot of interest.  Wind River hosted a webinar last week that attracted over a 1000 people. No wonder some embedded software vendors are just now jumping in with “me too” solutions.  Although not heavily pushed at this year’s ESC, there were a few companies attempting to put a stake in the ground with Android integration services.
8. Express Logic Monkeys are still the best giveaways.  It’s amazing.  Every year Express Logic gives away stuffed monkeys to anyone and everyone who sits through their presentations.  It blows me away that so many people, year after year, make getting one a priority. On the other hand, maybe Express Logic is on to something.  They announced over 750 million ThreadX deployments.  They are obviously doing something right.  

These 8+ non-tweets are just a few takeaways from the conference.  Did you make it to this year’s event?  Did you at least follow it online? What were your highlights?

A good user experience goes well beyond the cool device in your hand

As thousands of people converge on Mobile World Congress the hype will be on the latest and coolest devices that will connect to the next generation wireless broadband network.  People will be in awe of the newest “thin as paper” notebooks and the “do everything” smartphones.  Device Manufacturers and Service Providers will demonstrate killer video and data applications running every kind of mobile device your can imagine.  But to win the mindshare and pocketbook of the Consumer takes more than cool gadgets.  It requires delivering the best user experience possible.   And, the expectation is not only that these devices look cool and do cool things, but they will also do everything promised at breakneck speed. 

Far away from the device in your hand is the network that processes, routes, and delivers every call, chat, email, or packet of data you send.   The equipment in the network: access points, base stations, node controllers, gateways to name a few, can make or break the user experience.  The growing expectation of the network is that it will always be on, will always make your voice call, will deliver video uninterrupted, and will do it all without any delays.

As most of the visitors to Mobile World Congress give their attention to the awesome device eye candy, the real cool story are the announcements about the latest and greatest multicore hardware and software technologies being developed for to improve the performance of network equipment.  3G and 4G networks are quickly adopting multicore technologies to increase network packet processing performance and to enable better scalability to handle the increasing broadband demand and multimedia traffic.  Multicore technologies are rapidly becoming the standard foundation for the next generation of network equipment delivering greater performance and ultimately a better user experience. 

At this year’s Mobile World Congress, look for multicore announcements from all the leading hardware vendors: Cavium, Freescale, Intel, LSI, and NetLogic.  And be sure to check out the announcement Wind River made about its multicore virtualization support made earlier this week. If you are planning to use multicore technologies in your next network product, be sure to read the Multicore Checklist for Success.