The Embedded Linux Expo and Conference (ELEC) was held June 11, 2002 in Dallas. The turn-out for the event was good.

The single-track event featured an interesting and entertaining opening Keynote by Matt Harris, CEO of Lineo. Matt's talk centered on issues with the GPL. The audience found his talk thoroughly interesting and group participation was extraordinarily high.

Following Matt's talk was a presentation by Dr. Doug Locke, VP of Technology at TimeSys. Doug's talk concerning real-time and Linux was full, and the crowd spilled out the door with those outside stretching their necks to hear. In general, it appeared that real-time was again a hot topic, with all talks on real-time well attended in both the ELEC and the parallel Real-Time and Embedded Computing Conference.

Next was a talk by Joe Taylor, of Tensilica, about his experience in porting Linux to their architecture of customizable and extensible processors. Their solution for supporting kernel configuration for user definable processor configuration was quite interesting.

After Joe's talk was a talk by Jim Lewis, of MontaVista, concerning MontaVista's Carrier Grade Linux. The discussion of MontaVista approach of fixing up a few places where the Linux kernel needlessly panics and improving device drivers to less likely hang one's system, as well as other features of their special distribution, was valuable.

Following Jim's talk was an entertaining talk by Craig Hollabaugh, author of Embedded Linux: Hardware, Software, and Interfacing. Craig provided a well received comparison and description of using embedded Linux on x86, PowerPC, and StrongARM architectures.

After Craig's talk was a presentation by Stephen Christo, of StarGen, on their Switch Fabric architecture and how they support Linux.

Next was a talk by Tim Melchoir, of Aeroflex UTMC, describing their experience with customizing Linux tools for their MIPS based product. This included a description of their port of the reduced library Newlib.

The concluding Keynote of the day was delivered by Dr. Victor Yodaiken, of FSM Labs. Victor's energized talk was well attended, with the room nearly filled to capacity — which was especially significant, coming as it did at the end of a long day for the participants. Victor explained the approach and perspective of his company's real-time Linux offering and gave some real world examples of its usage. He also compared the RTLinux approach to alternative real-time Linux approaches.

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About the author: Kevin Dankwardt is founder and President of K Computing, a training and consulting firm. He has spent most of the last 9 years designing, developing, and delivering technical training for such subjects as Unix system programming, Linux device drivers, real- time programming, and parallel-programming for various organizations world-wide. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science, in 1988.

 
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