Although Embedded World is often associated with the latest and greatest in hardware, numerous software companies also attend to demonstrate how their products can help embedded developers accelerate their time to market and ease qualification requirements for automotive, industrial, or consumer devices.
Today, we’ll highlight three new embedded software releases for engineers to use at every step of the design process. We will also discuss each release’s target applications and the benefits it can provide embedded designers.
Configurable Zonal Communications
In partnership with STMicroelectronics and Cetitec, Green Hills Software announced a new integrated and configurable communications platform for next-generation, software-defined vehicles (SDVs). As automakers shift from domain architectures to zonal and centralized architectures, communication between ECUs becomes critical, especially as safety-critical components may be controlled by more than one ECU.
As vehicle architectures turn toward centralization, communication can become a big safety and security weak point, requiring robust design for SDVs. Image used courtesy of Green Hills Software
As a result, Green Hills built a solution to easily interface multiple ECUs together in an integrated and scalable fashion. The proposed solution leverages ST’s Stellar Integration family of MCUs, providing Green Hills with the computational and memory performance required to develop a robust communication solution. The solution uses Green Hills’ µ-velOSity RTOS in addition to Cetitec’s Gateway and Distributed Communications Framework to realize a configurable communications design.
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All About Circuits’ editor-in-chief Jeff Child (left) talks with Chris Smith, vice president, marketing for Green Hills, at Embedded World 2024.
Interested designers can leverage the Green Hills MULTI IDE and ST’s Stellar Studio to work with and adapt the solution to meet their needs. They can also use the included features, such as the history event viewer and “TimeMachine” back-in-time debugger, to help produce a reliable final product.
Embedded Vulnerability and Project Management
LDRA also attended Embedded World, where it revealed a slew of software packages built to monitor project workflows, identify security vulnerabilities, and accelerate the certification process.
As embedded hardware becomes more complex, so does the underlying software. LDRA’s new software targets a variety of developers and offers improvements to security and functional safety analysis and tracking. Using these tools, included in the LDRA tool suite, developers and managers can simplify the code management process while reducing the hours spent on compliance with the bevy of standards available.
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All About Circuits editor-in-chief Jeff Child (left) talks with LDRA Technology’s Jim McElroy.
In addition, the LDRA tool suite offers developers a method of identifying weaknesses in existing code while also accelerating the time to certification. This is accomplished by aggregating verification data and unifying this data to offer a top-down look at the verification process.
RISC-V Compilers for Security-Critical Applications
Tasking presented its compiler toolset for RISC-V processors at the show. The toolset targets safety- and security-critical applications where meeting standards can be difficult but necessary. As RISC-V adoption continues to grow, Tasking’s toolset could streamline future embedded RISC-V development.
Previous Tasking releases have been fully qualified with other core architectures, accelerating the certification process for embedded designers. Image used courtesy of Tasking
In automotive applications, for example, both the functional safety and security of any embedded software are paramount to creating a robust end device. With stringent security standards such as ISO 26262 and ISO/SAE 21434, developers need a compiler that has embedded security baked in. Tasking reports that its VX toolset is the “first compiler to meet these rigorous criteria,” which could benefit embedded designers who would like to incorporate RISC-V in their own products and accelerate the qualification process.
Software and Hardware Go Hand-In-Hand
While it is easy to get swept up in the performance boosts of the latest embedded hardware, almost none of it would matter without equally high-performing software. As embedded hardware becomes more complex, software must also advance to continue enabling innovation.
The software shown here from Green Hills Software, LDRA, and Tasking could be instrumental for the future of embedded design by helping engineers more easily understand performance metrics, improve communications development, and access new tools for embedded software design.