Foreword: Chris Lanfear, an embedded industry analyst with Venture Development Corp. (VDC), has published his annual report on the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. The report captures highlights, trends, themes, and vendor announcements, and announces the winner of VDC's “Embeddies” award for the best of show.

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VDC Report on ESC Boston 2004 (Sept. 13-16)
by Chris Lanfear

Maybe they should have called ESC Boston 2004 “Eclipse Software Conference” or perhaps “Eclipsapalooza.” It seemed like most vendors, with the exception of Green Hills, have been drinking the open source Kool-Aid and have embraced the IDE framework. Eclipse was everywhere at the show, with vendors such as Accelerated Technology, LynuxWorks, MCC Systems, and others offering tools supporting Eclipse.

For some vendors who did not previously offer a tool chain, the decision was likely pretty easy, but for others such as Wind River Systems (not at the show), it was probably much more complicated given their installed base of Tornado customers. Of course, most strategy decisions are fairly simple once you remove sunk costs from the equation. Microsoft, Metrowerks, and Green Hills Software are the three remaining major holdouts. Microsoft will probably not be changing anytime soon. VDC expects Metrowerks to support Eclipse in the future though probably not exclusively. That leaves Green Hills, who is betting on their end-to-end control of the OS and tools. Even though the rules of the game are changing, don't count them out.

This year's Boston show hosted around 150 exhibitors. Although vendor attendance was light, developer attendance was fair, with an estimated 2,500+ attendees during the week. Traffic on the exhibit floor was relatively strong on Tuesday, but slow on Wednesday, especially in the afternoon. Most of the vendors that VDC spoke with were happy with the amount and quality of traffic. In addition, many said that the intangibles (competitive intelligence, partnership building and just seeing what's new) were of high value.

Most notable was the lack of participation from most of the top industry vendors like Wind River Systems, IBM/Rational, The Mathworks, MontaVista, QNX, and many others. With budgets among OEMs and vendors still more constrained than in the past, other avenues for marketing and product information gathering, such as the Internet and direct sales, may be seen as more straightforward methods of getting the message out to customers and the developer community. Most of the exhibits were fairly cut-and-dry, with little in the way of hands-on demos, spectacular give-aways, and grand marketing gimmicks, and it was clear that most vendors' interests were in simply providing interested attendees with straightforward technology/product information and announcements.

The Embeddies Go To:

Best of Show: National Instrument's CompactRIO — National Instruments continues to impress and defy categorization. Their tools and solutions are so versatile it is often difficult to get a handle on all the possibilities. CompactRIO is a small form factor data acquisition and industrial control system that is programmed using LabVIEW. The basic offering is a real-time processing unit with either a 4 or 8 slot chassis for expandability. The processing unit features a 200MHz Pentium class CPU while the chassis is powered by an FPGA, which accepts custom logic programmed in LabVIEW FPGA. The result is a versatile, rugged and easily deployed test and measurement or control solution.

Walking the Floor

The show's most prominent and lively booth was definitely occupied by Green Hills Software. The company jumped on the election-year bandwagon, played presidential anthems, and had employees passing out “vote for Integrity/Velocity” buttons at the entrance to the exhibit floor. In addition to focusing on its core messages of royalty free RTOS, code reliability/security, and POSIX compliance, the company announced an enhanced level of integration between its Integrity RTOS and I-Logix's Rhapsody product, as well the availability of Integrity RTOS for Analog Devices's family of Blackfin processors.

I-Logix announced a new hybrid systems/software engineering process called Harmony. The model driven development (MDD) process incorporates UML 2.0 standards, SysML, and an engineering workflow that addresses the iterative development through the implementation, design, analysis, and testing cycle on both the systems and software sides. In addition to its news around Green Hills Software, the company also announced a number of recent customer wins in the automotive and military/aerospace industries.

Accelerated Technology/Mentor Graphics Corporation's major message was its new Nucleus EDGE development environment, an Eclipse-based platform that incorporates features and technology from the company's code|lab and XRAY Debugger products. The company anticipates that once developers adjust to the Eclipse framework advancements, they will greatly improve development productivity. Look for all of the company's embedded systems products to sport the Nucleus brand name going forward.

LynuxWorks announced its release of an Eclipse-enhanced IDE called Luminosity. The product supports Solaris and Linux host platforms. The company also announced that Rockwell Collins had selected its LynxOS-178 for the third phase of its Manned/Unmanned Architecture Program, continuing to demonstrate traction in a number of military/aerospace applications.

Continuing to promote its leading position in the support of Java-based mission/safety critical applications, Aonix announced Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) support in its PERC Virtual Machine solution. The company also announced the release of TeleUSE version 3.2.4, which enables GUI development on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 and Fedora Core 2.0.

Quadros announced the addition of a of an advanced network security suite to its RTXC Quadnet TCP/IP product. The new security features include IPSec, Internet Key Exchange, and SSL protocols.

Enea Embedded Technology announced a safety critical platform for Embedded Medical Devices (EE-MED). With the OSE RTOS as the foundation, ENEA is providing all the products and safety critical engineering services to bring embedded medical devices from initial planning to FDA certification.

Certicom announced its Security Architecture for Mobility platform and a developer tool kit for the embedded VPN and secure VoIP markets, based on its movianVPN product, called Security Builder IPSec.

In addition to exhibiting a demo of the company's CompactRIO product (see Best in Show above), National Instruments also promoted a number of recent software/product releases. Last month the company announced the availability of NI Signal Express, a software environment for managing measurement signals, and just this week announced a module for LabVIEW called NI SoftMotion Development. The new module allows developers to create customized motion controllers on various platforms within the LabVIEW graphical development environment.

Real-Time Innovations announced the availability of its Networks Data Distribution Service (NDDS), a publish-subscribe middleware based on the Object Management Group's (OMG) Data Distribution Service (DDS.)

The consultants at MCC Systems are getting into the tools business. The company is now offering an Eclipse-based IDE initially supporting VxWorks and Linux. The company is offering OEM/private label opportunities for embedded OS vendors who are looking for their own tool chain.

MacCraigor Systems showed usb2Demon, a USB 2.0 JTAG/BDM on-chip debugging device.

After acquiring Accelent Systems in August, it would have been difficult for Vibren Technologies to come up with a more significant announcement for the conference. The company was both part of the Microsoft partner pavilion, but also maintained its own exhibit on the floor.

Microsoft was more interested in showcasing its partners this year than making its own presence known. Intrynsic Software, bSquare, VentureCom, Vibren Technologies, TenAsys Corp., Kuka Controls, and others were present as part of a group exhibit in Microsoft's “Partner Pavilion.”

Other embedded solution providers included Polyspace, Blue Peach, Pathfinder, Doublewide, Nohau Corporation, PeerSec Networks, Allegro, LDRA, Ignios, Kozio, Paragon, and many others.

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The above report was originally published in VDC's September, 2004 Embedded Systems Bulletin. The Bulletin is published in support of VDC's “Embedded Software Strategic Market Intelligence Program.” VDC has been providing embedded systems market intelligence for 20 years.

VDC's research reports include:

• Embedded Operating Systems
• Software Development Tools
• Design Automation Tools
• Test Automation Tools Linux in the Embedded Market
• Regional Market Demand
  • Americas
  • EMEA
  • Asia-Pacific
• Vertical Markets and Application Analysis (avail. 11/04)
• Safety-Critical Software Industry Brief (avail. 12/04)
• Secure Real-time Embedded Operating Systems Industry Brief (avail. 12/04)

Copyright Venture Development Corporation, 2004, all rights reserved. Reproduced with permission by LinuxDevices.com.

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