Wind River Blog Network

Inadequate Management Visibility into Quality is Eroding Confidence

By Paul Henderson

Here’s the next installment in my series on our embedded device software industry testing survey conducted in April-May 2010 with almost 900 respondents (see previous blog postings).  If you’d like a copy of the full report in pdf, please drop me an email at paul.henderson@windriver.com and I will send it to you.

In this section of the survey we asked participants about how they measure software quality today, the metrics most often cited by survey respondents were reactive in nature such as tracking customer-reported failures and open defects rather than metrics that can help them prevent defects.

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Compressed Schedules Driving Shorter Testing & Defect Resolution Requirements

By Paul Henderson

Today I'm continuing my series on our embedded device software industry testing survey conducted in April-May 2010 with almost 900 respondents (see previous blog posting).  If you’d like a copy of the full report in pdf, please drop me an email at paul.henderson@windriver.comand I will send it to you.

In part 2 of the survey we asked about schedule compression and what affect that was having on the device testing cycle. A majority of survey participants reported that market conditions have forced them to shorten their development schedules by as much as 18 months.

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Addressing Core Issues

By Mark Hermeling

A good article from colleague Jens Wiegand on multicore in medical devices. Jens talks about consolidation and innovation, two driving factors in both medical and industrial devices. However, he also points out the flip side of the coin: certification. Virtualization can help provide strong separation on multicore, which makes certification manageable (the article goes into more depth).

Jens also touches on tooling for multicore development, an often-overlooked and under appreciated aspect. A single development environment that can be used to develop the entire device (real-time, UI, kernels, userland) as well as drive testing and debugging is a must to create highly efficient development teams.

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Talk Between Devices

By Nikhil Chauhan

Ever wondered what it would be like without access to ever increasing means of connection?

Thanks to social networking sites that I am now in touch with my friends who used to exchange bicycles while riding to my fifth grade class.

In the past decade or so, we have come a long way. The social norms have been re-defined with applications such as social networking, M-commerce, E-Commerce, virtual world, remote health monitoring, E-readers, media streaming and storage, etc. All of these are resulting in an explosion in global internet traffic. Cisco forecasts that the annual global IP traffic will reach half a zettabyte in 2012.

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Smartphones, Smartbooks different by necessity?

By Doug Schaefer

Boy I'm having fun with Android. Maybe because it's the first time I'm getting the chance (albeit in my spare time) to do some real embedded development. And even in the playing I'm doing, I am experiencing the challenges that regular embedded developers face. Yes, believe or not, even with the latest and greatest hardware, you are limited by the amount of memory and storage your device has, and by the speed and capabilities of the processor. Not to mention power (feel like running your graphics loop at full speed, see how long your battery lasts doing that). You really have to think about these things and write your code carefully to be successful. (And I won't get started on Java again).

One thing you still see in the rumoursphere with Android is the spreading of it's wings into the "smartbook" world. I love that term, Smartbook. Mobile Internet Device is too vague and I think there is a clear delineation between the tree contenders: smartphone, startbook, netbook. Smartphones are the small handheld things we know and love today. Netbooks are the small notebooks which likely have a hard drive in them. But Smartbooks are an exciting middle ground between the two. They have usable screens, 5-9 inches, but everything else is like a smartphone, particularly in mobility and power consumption. A good smartbook should last the day without charging making it handy for carrying around conferences like EclipseCon, for example :).

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BMW wants to go open

By Doug Schaefer

Ian Skerrett, our fine director of Marketing at the Eclipse Foundation, pointed out this article from MotorAuthority.com. BMW apparently is feeling out the market to see if there is an appetite by tier one manufacturers to work together on an open source stack for in-car infotainment systems.

The concept BMW has in mind reminds me a lot of Google's Android who just recently released all the source to the Android platform for cell phones. Android is Google's attempt to open up the software stack for much the same reason BMW wants it for automotive, to ensure leading edge software applications can be built for those platforms with minimal obstacles. We'll see how well the master plan works, but I like the concept.

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Who's leading anyway?

By Doug Schaefer

The LinuxHater linked off to Christopher Blizzard's (from OLPC fame and now at Mozilla) blog on the current state of affairs with the GNOME project. He gives some very eye opening insight into what's happening there and the potential future directions for GNOME, GTK, and friends. It's not pretty, literally.

GNOME is getting big in the mobile space, or at least the number of contributors from that space is starting to dominate the GNOME project. And as we all know in the open source world, the contributors are the leaders and get to make the decisions. What this likely means and what blizzard is afraid of is that the GNOME desktop is not going to get the attention it needs to compete with the modern interfaces it competes with. The commercial interest just isn't there to make it happen like it is with GNOME mobile.

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Mobile Broadband dongles find success in UK

By Paul Tingey

There seems to have many news stories about the imminent rise of 3G technology in the UK over the last few years. Looking back these stories would seem to have heralded repeated false dawns with 3G being relegated to little more than another mobile voice calling technology. However we now seem to have positive proof that 3G based mobile broadband is becoming a viable alternative to (or addition to) more traditional broadband technologies for UK users.

In a blog entry titled Mobile net takes off, Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC includes what he describes as "an extraordinary graph" showing how the amount of data crossing the 3 mobile operator's 3G network has increased 14 fold in just six months.

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The Emergence of the Femtocell

By Paul Tingey

Amongst all the news (and some would say hype) about Fixed Mobile Convergence, there is another market dynamic being played out which may lead to an alternative form of change. Fixed-to-Mobile Substitution (or FMS) aims to increase the proportion of calls made from traditional 2G/3G mobile handsets at the expense of those made from other devices such as fixed lines or dual-mode (or converged) handsets.

In reality this is a trend started by consumers themselves who, attracted by falling mobile call rates, have begun to use their mobile phones for all their voice calls whether they are outside of or within their homes. This substitution effect is most noticeable (for fixed line operators) amongst new users (i.e. in new households) who are often opting not to have a fixed line phone installed at all.

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Why Integrity Customers Get Free Support from Wind River

By Warren Kurisu

Previously, our CMO John Bruggeman blogged  about the importance of Service  and Support for Linux.  He called it the killer app for Linux.

We recently announced our new VxWorks and Wind River Linux platforms, which integrate the Wind River Advanced Networking Technologies.  This technology portfolio is a best-of-breed combination of technologies developed by Wind River and those acquired from Interpeak.  That is great news for VxWorks and Wind River Linux customers, but what about Interpeak customers using Integrity?

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Fixed Mobile Convergence : Evolution or Revolution ?

By Paul Tingey

The last couple of months have seen a flurry of reports on the subject of the future prospects for Fixed Mobile Convergence (from, for example, Pyramid Research and IDC) which has, in turn, spawned a flurry of web articles and blog comment on the same subject. The consensus among most of these reports is that Fixed Mobile Convergence (or FMC) adoption is set to grow over the next few years and that those companies who are investing in it are, in the main, investing wisely.

However, how users (or should that be prospective users) view the move towards FMC is more difficult to judge. In an article on Computing.co.uk, a research Director from IDC describes how their recent report outlines their view that operators (at least in Western Europe) are finding it difficult to sign up customers to FMC services.

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Fixed Mobile Convergence, Episode Two : The Human Factor

By Paul Tingey

In Episode One in this series of posts I outlined my thoughts on what Fixed Mobile Convergence is and how it defines the future of communications. FMC is occupying the minds (and development cycles) of most of the worlds largest telecoms companies. However, it is not such a hot topic amongst consumers which raises an interesting question; will consumers really be that bothered about FMC ?

Recent years have seen consumers demanding higher functionality and improved mobility from modern mobile communications and entertainment devices. The telecoms industry has been quick to respond with devices such as the Blackberry Pearl and the recently released (and very funky) Apple iPhone. These are the kind of devices which consumers seem keen to spend their hard earned money on. At the same time few aspire to buy the latest fixed line phone.

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RDC in China

By Tomas Evensen

I just came back from a couple of weeks in China. Fascinating country. Besides the usual customer visits, we also held three Regional Development Conferences (RDCs) in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.

The RDCs were a huge success with on average more than 400 attendees per day. And they were all very interested in hearing about Wind River's latest offerings and future plans.

How do I know they all were interested? Well, my leading indicator was that all seats were taken from the front working towards the back. Somewhat different from your typical American or European conference, where the back seats seem to be the hottest commodity. (BTW, I am of course not indicating that our American and European friends are not interested... Perhaps they have better eye sight).

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Fixed Mobile Convergence, Episode One : Please mind the step !

By Paul Tingey

Glenn Seiler's recent post (Report from the International Telecommunications Union Conference) gave readers an interesting insight into developments in the world of Fixed Mobile Convergence. As Glenn points out, FMC attempts to "enrich our every-day lives by making it easier to do the things we value most". Essentially FMC is about making technology work the way we want it to rather than leaving us struggling simply to make it work.

However, the reality is that FMC will only be realized in small steps. Like a baby finding its feet for the first time, some steps will seem bold and assured while others will seem uncoordinated and divergent. I thought in this post I would outline my thoughts about the first faltering steps along the path to Fixed Mobile Convergence.

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Report from the International Telecommunications Union Conference

By Glenn Seiler

I’ve been in Hong Kong the last week visiting the ITU Telecom World 2006. The theme of this show, as articulated by a keynote speech from Vivian Reding, the European Union commissioner for Information Society and Media, is “Living in the Digital World”.  The fact that someone from the EU was giving the keynote at a Telecom show in Asia shows just how international this trade-show is. There are pavilions from nearly every major country, with Telecom providers from each country showing how they are bringing to their markets new Fixed Mobile Convergence services such as VoIP to cell phones.

As with any large trade-show – and this show is one of the largest – it’s a little overwhelming. There are so many vendors all trying to get their message heard above the others. There are ten halls of vendors with everything that has anything to do with telecommunications – from coaxial cable vendors with cable as big as my arm (for FTTP – Fiber-to-the-Premise) to consumer electronics. It is the latter of course that drew my attention. It was hard to escape the hype around triple play. Not just to the home or office, but to the phone itself.

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Quality of Service (QoS)

By Stuart Newton

Arrived home last night after 2 weeks of business travel, and my broadband connection was down.  Not impressed.  At all.  Not only is it totally inconvenient, but it put me in a bad mood because I had to try and get connected via the phone line.  Couldn't find my dial-up user name or password, so no access.

The last time this happened (just over a year ago), it took my broadband supplier 10 days to isolate the fault.  They ran a test on the line and told me the problem was at my house.  Ten days later they found the problem at the local exchange.  I'm now posting this over a 56k modem connection thanks to an extremely helpful and rapid response from our IT department.

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So what is Fixed Mobile Convergence?

By Stuart Newton

Where do you start on a topic like this? Fixed-Mobile Convergence (commonly known as "FMC", and not to be confused with Fixed Mobile Substitution – a later discussion), is a vast topic that has a hundred different meanings depending on who you talk to. In the last year, I have spoken to very few people who can articulate what it means, and seen it regularly confused with "IMS" (IP Multimedia Subsystem).

So what is it? I’ll start with my perspective, and welcome any other interpretations that people would like to throw in.

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