EEA shortlist: Analog Devices

In recent years, embedded devices have seen exponential increases in processing speed, core count, functionality, and complexity. The migration from multiple, single-purpose ICs to heterogeneous, multi-core, highly integrated SoCs provides clear benefits in bill-of-materials cost and total board area required. Those cost and space-savings, however, come at the expense of more complex software-development pipelines. Those pipelines result in established or proprietary code bases that are central to system design, and existing config tools often lack flexibility or customisation, limiting how those code bases can be utilised.

New challenges include enabling development teams to effectively partition resources across multiple cores and processing domains. How does team A working on one core deal with resource allocation changes coming from team B on another core?

How do distinct software teams work effectively with each other across a common firmware image, since software on one core often depends on firmware on other cores?

System Planner solves many of these challenges around project creation and resource partitioning on complex, heterogeneous devices. Using a permissibly licensed, open-source architecture, System Planner enables flexible project creation across multiple cores, and graphical resource allocation of memory and peripherals. Once resources are assigned to a core, it also includes config tools that are aware of the real-time operating system or firmware platform being used on a given core, exposing context-aware config settings for a peripheral or memory block. With added insight into system performance and accessible, open-source tools to improve resource allocation, developers will have greater ability to efficiently optimise their designs.

For more information, visit: www.analog.com/codefusionstudio

The Electronics Excellence Awards ceremony will take place at embedded world on 12th March at 4.30pm at the Hall 3 Exhibitor’s Forum.

You’re all welcome to come and see which product will win!