Japanese embedded Linux house Lineo Solutions has demonstrated embedded Linux technology that it hopes can meet one of the high-priority requirements outlined by the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF): hard, real-time performance. Lineo Solutions demonstrated its real-time Linux implementation running on a Via Epia-ME6000 at the Boot Fest session of CELF Plenary Meeting held in Las Vegas, January 8,… (more…)

Intel unveiled a new moniker for its next-generation audio specification for PCs, previously codenamed “Azalia”: High Definition Audio. Intel says High Definition Audio — a name intended to reflect the marriage of advanced audio capabilities in PCs and consumer electronics (CE) — will be used to implement a range of CE-quality audio, modem, and communications functions in PCs, handhelds, and… (more…)

Metrowerks Senior Software Engineer and veteran real-time programmer Bernhard Kuhn has created a Linux kernel patch that he claims enables hard, real-time performance in the Linux kernel by adding priorities to interrupts and spinlocks. Kuhn believes his approach to be more “natural” and akin to traditional real-time operating systems (RTOSs) than the dual-kernel approach taken by real-time projects such… (more…)

Pigeon Point Systems is marketing GPL “editions” of its Monterey Linux that support three Texas Instruments (TI) DSP-based digital media processors. The $1,500 offerings include “comprehensive documentation” and tools, and target digital media receivers, set-top boxes, video conferencing, and other consumer electronics products. (more…)

Wyse Technology has added optional support for DVD recording and playback technology to its IPV500 set-top box (STB) that supports Linux and is based on an Intel digital STB reference design. The new DVD support comes from Sonic Solutions' AuthorScript software. (more…)

Wind River Systems has taken yet another step toward embedded Linux, announcing it has joined the CE Linux Forum (CELF), an industry group focused on the advancement of Linux as an open source platform for consumer electronics devices. (more…)

Lineo Solutions has contributed patches to the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum that enable its CE-optimized Linux distribution to run on SuperH processors, and SuperH processor company Renesas has released a “prototype development platform” that runs the new CE Linux code. (more…)

Roku has released a software development kit (SDK) for its embedded Linux-based HD1000 high definition digital media player, and will give away a giant LCD TV in a coding contest. The C/C++ SDK avails developers of APIs and libraries used in the hacker-friendly (more…)

WindowsForDevices has published an extensive interview with Artifex, the 21-year-old programmer who founded the xbox-windows project to port Windows CE to the Xbox. The project combines open source and shared source development based on an interesting marriage of GPL/LGPL software (borrowed from the xbox-linux port)… (more…)

The world's first MPEG-4 encoder-decoder (CODEC) System-on-Chip (SoC) will be supplied to device designers with a ready-to-run embedded Linux kernel and Linux development tools, according to chipmaker Protocom and Linux support partner LynuxWorks. The device targets consumer electronic and military applications, and will appear initially in a tapeless camcorder device from an unnamed consumer electronics… (more…)

The “real time interrupt patch” (rtirq-patch) described in this document enables the linux kernel for hard-real-time applications by adding priorities to interrupts and spinlocks. (more…)

According to a summary market research report from Allied Business Intelligence (ABI), wireless handset operating systems (OSs) and middleware have started playing an increasingly important role for OEMs/ODMs. After a long tradition of handsets equipped with firmware/proprietary OSs, current Smartphones offer standardized platforms allowing flexibility to communicate seamlessly among various devices. (more…)

Transmeta introduced two reference platforms today, to support device and system designs based on its Efficeon TM8600 and Crusoe TM5900 processors. Both platforms support Linux. Interestingly, the Crusoe TM5900 reference platform (pictured on the left) is implemented in the increasingly popular (more…)

The Khronos Group, an industry group promoting graphics and multimedia standards, has finalized an adopter's package and conformance testing procedure for the 1.0 release of OpenGL Embedded Subset (ES), a 2D/3D graphics… (more…)

A brief market research summary outlines growing overlap and competition between personal computer (PC) and consumer electronics (CE) vendors, as PC vendors seek higher-margin markets, and computing and consumer technologies converge. PC vendors are unlikely to win much of a stake in the consumer electronics domain, though, according to research firm ABI. (more…)