Role Of IoT Software Expanding


IoT software is becoming much more sophisticated and complex as vendors seek to optimize it for specific applications, and far more essential for vendors looking to deliver devices on-time and on-budget across multiple market segments. That complexity varies widely across the IoT. For example, the sensor monitoring for a simple sprinkler system is far different than the preventive maintenanc... » read more

Disaggregating And Extending Operating Systems


The push toward disaggregation and customization in hardware is starting to be mirrored on the software side, where operating systems are becoming smaller and more targeted, supplemented with additional software that can be optimized for different functions. There are two main causes for this shift. The first is rising demand for highly optimized and increasingly heterogeneous designs, which... » read more

Making Everything Linux-Capable


It's not clear how the edge will play out or what will be the winning formula from a hardware standpoint. But for everything beyond the end device, and possibly even including the end device, a key prerequisite will be the ability to run Linux. That means at least one processor or core within the hardware will need to run 64-bit software. In addition, systems will need to have enough storage... » read more

Software Impact Grows


By Ed Sperling As the number of processors and processor cores increase in SoC, so does the amount of software. But unlike hardware, which grows linearly, software frequently grows exponentially. The great advantage of software is configurability—both before and after tapeout—yet it adds many more possible permutations and interactions that need to be worked out. And unlike the old PC m... » read more

Blurring The Lines At The OS Level


By Ed Sperling Picking an operating system—or choosing not to use an operating system—is becoming as complex a decision as choosing which IP to use in an SoC. Even decisions that sound straightforward may have ramifications on the total system power budget or performance, requiring them to be an integral part of the overall architectural process. But the choice of operating systems, as ... » read more