Built using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) building blocks

In recent years, building, maintaining, and evolving proprietary network systems for telecom-grade applications that are highly available and "always on" have become increasingly prohibitive from the perspective of cost, risk management, time to revenue, and so on.

State of the industry

Wide adoption of several of these key standards has resulted in commercially viable COTS building blocks – hardware and software – that address various functional layers in a network-ready system quickly and cost effectively (Figure 1). This approach is being broadly employed by various industry players, and such platforms have been successfully deployed in networks worldwide. A few critical challenges, however, still remain:

Figure 1: The communications industry is migrating towards vertically integrated platforms.

There is increasing industry recognition of these challenges, and key players are stepping forward to effectively address them.

Network Applications Platform

The CSPs' need to bring innovative services to market quickly and at a competitive cost creates a direct challenge for NEPs to provide telecom network elements that meet their requirements. Not only does the approach of using platforms that are built with field-proven COTS building blocks help NEPs save R&D expense and time, it enables them to focus their precious resources on revenue-generating applications and services.

Oracle Corporation has been actively pursuing product programs designed to help NEPs transition to this approach. The Oracle Network Applications Platform (ONAP) is a pre-integrated, pre-tested engineered system using hardware and software assets designed to meet mission-critical communications network workloads. These COTS assets, that have already been deployed and tested in numerous commercial deployments in a variety of markets, span all layers of the platform – hardware, storage, Operating System (OS),virtualization, service availability, management, and a host of application services (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Oracle Network Applications Platform provides high levels of availability by leveraging industry-standard COTS assets at all levels of the stack.

ONAP is designed with the objective of addressing the functional and non-functional requirements of a wide set of network and back office applications, and others. The extensible architecture of ONAP has been designed to provide resident applications with 5-nines and higher availability, end-to-end management, scalability, and reliability – all supported in multiple operating environments.

ONAP's architecture is designed to enable customers to maximize the value of their investments by leveraging a carrier-grade platform on which they can swiftly develop and deploy applications. It also provides optimized performance, High Availability (HA), and seamless integrated operations management for mission-critical deployments. ONAP accomplishes this by leveraging best-of-suite COTS technologies, including extensive use of the various services defined by the SAF to ensure continuous service availability of applications hosted on the platform.

The key tenets of the ONAP architecture are summarized here.

Unified Availability

ONAP implements a comprehensive availability management framework that, along with several supporting services, provides end-to-end availability lifecycle management for all layers of the system. ONAP Unified Availability monitors the health and availability of the platform infrastructure services, which affect application availability. This leads to a cohesive availability management model that encompasses the entire stack – from hardware to the application – and drives the highest level of application availability. This is a unique approach that brings together technologies that offer carrier-grade service availability to telecom and IT applications. These technologies form the basis of two COTS products that have been field-hardened in a large number of telecom and enterprise applications worldwide for several years.

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Through the use of the SAF Application Interface Specification (AIS)Availability Management Framework (AMF) and Cluster Membership (CLM) services, these two powerful products have been integrated within ONAP and offer critical functionality to ensure data and session integrity in a wide variety of network and back office applications.

ONAP abstracts the underlying platform from the application developers by providing a set of SAF AIS Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Clusterware interfaces as part of a Software Development Kit (SDK).

Unified Management

ONAP brings forth a set of COTS technologies and products, each with sophisticated functionality at various layers of the integrated stack. Managing such an integrated platform can be complex and challenging. ONAP implements a comprehensive management framework and related services that provide a consistent and unified approach to managing the entire platform – from hardware to the application(s) and the intervening middleware, Platform Service Modules (PSMs), application services, and so on. The Unified Management capability leverages field-proven technologies and products that have been widely deployed to provide management solutions to a variety of applications. Unified Management covers a broad set of management requirements of the platform

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Extensible architecture

ONAP has been designed and implemented to meet the requirements of a wide variety of network and network-facing applications. Whereas the base platform addresses the common requirements of such applications, ONAP also provides the ability to optionally integrate other technologies and solutions from Oracle, as well as third-party databases, Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), application services, and protocol suites, for example. Such solutions, referred to by ONAP as PSMs, become native to ONAP and enjoy the benefits of Unified Availability and Unified Management once integrated.

Operating environments

ONAP offers four major operating environments – an OS and CPU combination that exposes a particular Application Binary Interface (ABI) for use by the overlaying application

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Virtualization of the operating environment is provided through the use of Oracle Virtual Server (OVS), which offers a broad set of capabilities:

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Vertical Integration

ONAP's uniqueness is due to yet another important factor. Other than any potential optional third-party PSMs, Oracle owns the intellectual property of the ONAP engineered COTS system, offering several advantages to the user

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Integration Development Kit

Integration of applications on ONAP is supported through a set of APIs provided by an Integration Development Kit (IDK). These API expose various capabilities of Unified Availability and Unified Management for use by the application integrator. This kit also provides packagingtools necessary to create software releases for ONAP deployment. Once the overall configuration of the system is determined, the IDK is used to create an appliance ready for intended deployment.

A final word

In recent years the COTS hardware and software industry has made significant strides towards building and providing products that meet the functionality, availability, manageability, and scalability requirements of demanding applications such as telecom. Network elements built through integration of such components have become viable and are being deployed in networks worldwide. However, this approach is not without its challenges – NEPs and CSPs following this path often have to manage multiple suppliers, coordinate their developments, and navigate disparate and complex support structures. By adopting a platform such as ONAP, NEPs and CSPs can leverage the ecosystem effectively and save cost, time, and effort required to build or integrate such systems in-house.

refer to : http://xtca-systems.com/articles/engineered-cots-network-systems/

The using of power outlets: tough call!

The main gaming challenges of using power outlets to connect devices in the home include a lack of industry specifications, multiple sources of electric noise, and difficulty passing through phases in the home. HomePlug technology has overcome these challenges by creating specifications with advanced, optimized algorithms that are realized in semiconductor technology. HomePlug AV addresses these shortcomings – and stay tuned for the HomePlug AV2 standard currently in development.

The reliability of a wired gaming  connection for high-speed connections has always been an advantage of HomePlug power line networking, and HomePlug AV and HomePlug AV2 include improvements to achieve nearly 100 percent coverage. Everyone enjoys the mobility of a wireless connection, but when a consumer is running a demanding application such as streaming video or online gaming, the wireless signal often isn’t strong enough. Appliances such as HDTVs, computers, or gaming consoles are most often stationary in the home, so HomePlug provides a perfect solution to deliver a gaming  broadband-strength network to these always-plugged-in devices simply via a nearby electrical outlet.

refer to:http://industrial-embedded.com/articles/plug-and-play-homeplug-homeplug-powerline-alliance/

The importance of the AFE

Another function of the AFE is to filter unwanted frequency ranges from the sensor, for example, to satisfy the Nyquist limit or to remove a DC offset. This embedded noise must be removed before the analog signal is converted to embedded digital. The AFE must employ low-pass filter circuitry to block out high-frequency noise and/or employ high-pass circuits to remove lower-frequency noise.

A second function of the AFE is to convert signals from one signal type to another. For example, typical sensors output a voltage, but some output a current. The MCU ADC circuits do not accept current inputs, so such currents have to be converted to voltages before going to the MCU. This current-to-voltage conversion is performed by the AFE circuit, called a transimpedance (I/V) circuit, which also amplifies the resulting voltage to levels usable by the MCU.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/latest-afe-simplifies-interfacing-hundreds-sensors/#at_pco=cfd-1.0

What's boost the performance and trim down the size of embedded applications

In response to growing pressure to boost the performance and trim down the size of embedded applications, standards organizations meet regularly to optimize their portfolios in light of the latest available technology. These updated standards take advantage of new silicon architecture combining multiple processors, graphics elements, and complex I/O to deliver the next generation of preengineered, off-the-shelf modules to support many of the high-performance requirements of embedded product development.

 

refer: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/evolving-simplify-embedded-development/

Embedded software and today's medical devices (Minimizing risk)

Stephen covers key system software issues that embedded systems developers must address, including next-generation SoCs that contain multiple cores and methodologies to properly allocate the applications between several types of operating systems.

Embedded developers face several decisions when developing medical embedded devices, from selecting the best system software for optimal application performance, to understanding the interactions and limitations between the software operating system and target hardware. Should the software engineer use a small micro-kernel,Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), or a General Purpose OS (GPOS) such as Android or Linux? Other considerations include the physical size of the system for portability and functionality requirements, including faster performance, power consumption, data protection, and display (user interface) technology. And FDA certification and industry standards that affect embedded software selection come into the mix as well.

Modern medical devices are evolving at a record clip. From portable wireless units for patients to use at home to larger more complex devices used by healthcare professionals at a facility, there’s no question we are at the forefront of developing new ways to empower patients and medical professionals alike. How do we make sure the system software that controls these devices does exactly as planned with little to no risk of harming the patient?

At the heart of the matter: operating systems

Typically an Operating System (OS) manages a medical embedded device. An OS can vary from a simple “roll your own” built in-house by a few enterprising software coders to a more complex OS from an established vendor. A GPOS such as Linux or Android establishes a feature-rich platform for application development, but sometimes consumes more memory than necessary. An RTOS is also a good choice for modern medical devices, particularly when specific system requirements require a deterministic preemptive kernel and a small memory footprint. Somewhere in the mix there is an ideal candidate for your application and hardware. One thing is certain: Before selecting your OS, know exactly the intentions of your application and the hardware you plan to use.

How will the device be used?

One way to minimize risk when developing your embedded system is to first consider its use cases – not just how the end-user will interact with it, but also how it will be designed, developed, and tested. Will the device be used primarily by a healthcare provider, by the patient at home, or both?
Does the device have communication modes or is it purely a stand-alone? Depending on its communication needs, you may find that your preferred OS includes many of the modes you need, or you might prefer another OS, in which case you’ll have to port over the communications stack and/or the driver to attain the right mix of communications software.
Are there any real-time needs identified? For some devices, there is no requirement for real-time behavior. If an interrupt is serviced 100 milliseconds late, the results may be delayed by 100 milliseconds, but that’s not going to cause a failure. However, if it’s a laser involved in eye surgery, this can have catastrophic effects if the laser does not turn on and off at the precise time. If the laser has eye tracking guidance, the laser must move in lockstep with a predefined pattern even in the presence of eye movement.
Perhaps the device is a critical piece of equipment, so there is minimal sensitivity to cost. On the contrary, a device that is handheld and sold in the millions has a high sensitivity to cost. These types of considerations will directly affect the need to minimize BOM, which in turn results in possibly minimizing the memory you’ll need to effectively build the complete application with some margin.

It’s all about the hardware

Once the use cases have been defined, it’s time to find the appropriate hardware. Medical systems can be extremely small, with an 8-bit microcontroller clocked at less than 25 MHz, and use only 8K of memory. More complex designs can include feature-rich SoCs clocked in the hundreds of MHz and megabytes of memory. The range of systems encompasses hybrid systems that have special purpose processors or DSPs to systems that include numerous multicore chips.
What’s best for your design comes out of the use cases and expectations on how you want the system to behave.

Is multicore necessary?

To the two main reasons that come to mind for selecting multicore – pure processing performance and low power management – a third could well be added, the combination of the two.
If you’re concerned with low power you may want to use a multicore SoC simply because it can utilize all the available cores at a lower clock frequency rather than clocking a main processor at a much higher frequency. When not needed, it can power down the extra cores to save power.
While both power and performance are good reasons to use multicore, the question is more about finding the best way to allocate the CPUs. With symmetric hardware you can use a single operating system across all the available cores as a type of Symmetric Multicore Processing (SMP). Most GPOSes and some RTOSes have this capability. Using SMP could complicate the scheduling across the cores, however, as real-time hits due to cache misses in one core could cause a cache flush in the other core, which invariably leads to delays in the system. Features such as spinlocks are common to all SMP-capable operating systems. If not employed correctly, a spinlock can hurt system performance, as one core stalls for an indeterminate time waiting for the resource on another core to be freed.
The other way to build the system (even with symmetric hardware) is to apply Asymmetric Multicore Processing (AMP) techniques. This approach involves two or more separate operating systems (Figure 1) interacting through some type of communication channel using hardware like a series of FIFOs or through shared memory. There is a standard that makes the application development portable by the Multicore Association called the Multicore Communications API (MCAPI).

Figure 1: Distributing your application across multiple operating systems as in this Asymmetric Multicore Processing (AMP) example can relieve risk.

When hardware and software worlds collide

Consider the case where a medical device that has USB connectivity to a Windows host computer usually follows the USB specification, but when all the parts of the SoC are activated, the hardware intermittently starts signaling outside the specification in such a way that the host computer shuts down the port in the middle of a session causing failure at the most inopportune time – during patient data collection. With results lost, the patient, who made special preparations for the original procedure 24 hours in advance, must prepare for retesting.
Two fundamental reasons caused the port shutdown. First, the software assumed that the USB controller would not fail. And second, the system architecture had not planned for the case where the unit is unplugged in the middle of a session. Had the system taken either one of these use cases into account, the system would have stored the data locally, allowing for a transfer after the session was re-established, thus minimizing the risk to the patient of a possible retest.
The application relied on the USB controller’s flawless operation to prevent data loss. If the application had been broken down into several sections, data loss might have been avoided. With an architecture where data collection and data transmission are not interrelated, even if the link goes down, the data is still stored in the device, so when it recovers it can pick up where it left off and not lose any data. A write to a buffer before the transmission to the host, which would occur in the background, is one way to avoid lost data in this type of scenario.
If a software workaround to detect the USB bus suspension is used, the workaround can take the SoC pins out of USB mode and make them GPIO pins so that the host can detect a reset condition and force a re-enumeration of the device. The USB software would then resubmit the buffers, and the transmission would resume. The end result is that the data would not be lost, just delayed while the workaround took place.

Portability considerations

An OS manages the system’s resources both in hardware and software. The most basic management is that of memory and time. But where does the responsibility of the OS stop and that of the application start? While an application can have a device driver built into it and talk directly to the hardware, porting to new hardware becomes a challenge as the device evolves and newer hardware is employed. Therefore, it is recommended that most, if not all, devices in the system be managed by the OS in order to ensure future portability.

Regulations and patient privacy

The need for portability includes wireless devices like a GSM radio or an 802.11 wireless interface for connectivity. Others include Bluetooth and ZigBee, where these links must also be secure and provide patient privacy. Even in the device itself, it’s imperative that only doctors who are authorized to see a patient actually see the data of that patient. Disallowing unauthorized access is also a critical requirement of any device. Are the records secure, even for the technician who works on the equipment? Are there any modes where this data is not secure? True Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) compliance is making sure that the securityof information is paramount. Security inside the database of patient records is as well.

Conclusion

Medical devices are a special breed that will touch all of us in some way. We need to take extra care when designing these systems to ensure that the device does what it is intended to do. Does it make sense to use an RTOS or a GPOS to meet the requirements of determinism, size, boot time, power optimization, and the breadth of middleware available? Finally, to minimize risk we need to make sure that all regulations with both HIPPA and the FDA are followed.
refer:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/minimizing-software-todays-medical-devices/

High-end electronics provide drivers

High-end electronics provide drivers and passengers with in-car navigation and entertainment and information delivered over a wireless network. In fact, many car buyers today care more about the infotainment technologies embedded in the dashboard than what's under the hood. This phenomenon is requiring additional storage space for rich multimedia data and advanced software and applications and is driving an explosive growth of both volatile and nonvolatile memories. Embedded multimedia cards are helping meet this demand in today's memory-hungry automotives.

1.Automotive electronics are memory hungry
2.Managed NAND: Ideal solution for car infotainment
3.An answer to automotive application needs

You can visit:
http://www.acrosser.com/Products/In-Vehicle-Computer.html
Refer:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/automotive-industry-innovation-driven-electronics/

Manage the IP selection process can help engineers effectively meet objectives and reduce risk

 

Knowing how to manage the IP selection process can help engineers effectively meet objectives and reduce risk.

As digital design has proliferated the electronics world, making designs faster, easier to test, and more robust, the analog portion of embedded designs is becoming a bottleneck. To meet requirements and timetables in the analog portion, engineers generally have three weapons at their disposal: utilize peripheral analog IC, build the functionality internally (make), or purchase the IP block from an external vendor (buy). Each option has its own merits and drawbacks, but none can launch a competitive advantage better or cause more frustrating confusion than analog IP.
Traditionally, these options only apply to ASIC builds, as FPGAs are not compatible with analog IP. However, this is changing quickly. Some IP companies now provide all Register Transfer Language (RTL)-based Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC), DC-DC converter controller, and clocking functions with robust performance.

Refer:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/understanding-analog-cores-embedded-computing-needs/v