Embedded Systems at Microsoft Research

I was looking for what kind of work is being done in the areas of Embedded Systems at Microsoft, and I found one group specifically working in the areas of Embedded Systems and Reconfigurable computing.

Research overview at Embedded Systems group at MSR;

Overview

Our work in Embedded Systems covers both the system software and the hardware platform issues.

System software is long lived and hard to develop.

• How can we make computers and consumer electronic devices less helpless and needy of detailed instruction?
• How can we build predictable systems out of a mix of real-time and non-real-time entities?
• How can we trust the computers and how can they trust us? But keep our privacy, lifestyle, safety, and convenience?
• What are the programming paradigms that simplify the programmer's tasks without undue overheads?
• How can we verify that software behaves as expected and adapts to a changing environment?
• How do we structure software for resource-constrained environments, while maximizing portability, reuse, and sharing?

Embedded hardware is diverse and forever changing.

• How can we realize more stable platforms without raising costs and complexity?
• What can we do to increase ease-of-use, especially for verification, debugging and performance tuning?
• How can we shorten the development and testing time for new systems?
• How can we best use reconfigurable hardware to execute software more efficiently?
• What are the best ways to exploit the functionality and the efficiency of reconfigurable computing?

Link: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/embeddedsystems/

Education in Embedded Systems – 2

MSc and MAS (Master of Advanced studies) in Embedded Systems courses are offered at ALaRI (Advanced learning and research institute), Switzerland.

This is another place in Europe which offers specific education in Embedded Systems (the first one being TU Delft, read here for more info). It offers virtually every courses on Embedded Systems and there are many courses which I found only at ALaRI. And good part is that best professor and experts in the area comes and teaches you that subject. In this post I would cover on MSc course at ALaRI.

Course Overview:
Duration: 2 years (120 EC)
Approximate cost for one year: Tuition 8000 CHF (around 5300 Euro) and Living expenses 7000 CHF (around 4600 Euro)

Master project takes up 35% of 2years and remaining time is spent in Courses, seminars and other lab assignments.

Courses offered:
The following list contains only selected few courses offered, for list of all courses visit ALaRI homepage.

1. Architectures by M.G. Sami Politecnico di Milano, Italy
2. Software Compilers by S. Crespi Reghizzi Politecnico di Milano, Italy
3. Transforms Theory by A. Danani SUPSI Lugano, Switzerland
4. RTOS and Scheduling by L. Thiele ETH Zurich, Switzerland and M. Platzner University of Paderborn, Germany
5. Specification Languages by R. Lauwereins IMEC, Leuven, Belgium and M. Engel's FMTC, Belgium
6. Digital Signal Processing by M. Moonen IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
7. Embedded processor design and implementation by R. Leupers, Aachen University of Technology
8. VLIW Architectures by P. Faraboschi HP Labs Cambridge, USA
9. Microelectronics by C. Piguet CSEM, Neuchatel, Switzerland
10. Performance Evaluation by G. Serazzi Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Personally I like the course content very much and would like to cover many topics from it during my masters. If you are interested in higher studies in Embedded Systems, then ALaRI should be in your list of colleges to apply. Also you don't need GRE or TOEFL for application and there is no application fee !

Links:
1. ALaRI home page: http://alari.ch/
Browse through above page, very informative.

2. Student experience at ALaRI. Edulix thread: http://www.edulix.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=69510
You would require registration on Edulix before reading.

Training done at Conexant Systems

After completing my engineering from NIT, Trichy I joined as Software Engineer at Conexant Systems , Hyderabad Aug 2007. I was very happy about getting through Conexant as I knew the job would be challenging and provide me with plenty of new learnings.

About fifty odd freshers joined in Software domain at Conexant and there was proper training planned for us (they must have put a lot thought in design of the training content). It gave us very good idea on Embedded Systems, virtually covering all the topics in the area. I would say I was lucky to go through this excellent training, which provided me great platform to start off with my professional career.

It covered following aspects,

1. Effective Programming using C:
Topics covered: Basic programming; data structures such as arrays, linked list, graphs and trees; algorithms for sorting, searching and some graph algortithms; and a lab on all topics covered in theory.

Essentially it was similar to Data structures and Algorithm course done during engineering, but it was nice to revise again.

2. Embedded Systems Programming:
Topics covered: Intro to Embedded systems; Basics of RTOS; Software tools such as debugger, linker, compiler; Object file formats and how to make sense of it; OS Internals and drivers; Designing a Real time system, design modules and a Case study.

This was the best training session, as you would see it covers all the important topic in Embedded System programming. Many things learned from this training which are still useful.

3. ARM Architecture:
Topics covered: Intro to RISC, overview of ARM architecture, Thumb instruction set, Interrupts in ARM, Caches and memory mapping etc.

This was another very good training, Embedded engineer must know about ARM architecture as it is most widely used in industry. I liked the concepts of Thumb instruction set and instruction decoding in ARM.

4. Linux Kernel Internals:
Topics covered: All the chapters from book Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love

I had good idea of Linux kernel before joining Conexant, but this session cleared all the doubts and gave a good overview of writing a device driver for Linux. Must buy / read book by Robert love.

5. Socket Programming:
Topics covered: This session gave overall idea about networking and how one can write socket in C.

6. Introduction to Testing:
Topics covered: This session gave idea about how testing fits into large picture, why testing is very important, and made sure that engineer does not neglects testing and considers them as important as development.

There were some sessions by HR on topics Assertive communication and team building exercise. Some good videos were shown for Assertive communication techniques such as fogging, broken record, Negative inquiry etc. Communication is as important as technical skills in industry (which many times people tend to neglect), and one has to improve upon it constantly.

Excellent web resourses on Embedded Systems

While browsing over the year, I found following very useful resources on Embedded systems. Following is the first list of them, would carry upon this in subsequent future posts. If you also come across any other resources, post it on comments.

1. Artist group, which is EU Network of excellence on Embedded Systems design
Home page: http://www.artist-embedded.org/artist/-Home-Page-.html
Browse through the above link, you would find many journals, articles and can understand the way research in Embedded Systems is moving forward.

Especially I found this collection videos and slides, of their Summer school held at France in 2008 very useful.
http://www.artist-embedded.org/artist/Videos-of-the-Presentations.html

2. ACM Transaction on Embedded Systems, special issue on education in this domain
http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=1086519&idx=J840&type=issue&coll=portal&dl=ACM&part=transaction&WantType=Transactions&title=TECS&CFID=53496696&CFTOKEN=70868022

The papers on education at Berkely or Carnegie Mellon are very informative. It would build your perspective on what kind of skills are necessary and how the education in this area can help.

3. Dedicated Systems Encyclopedia
http://www.realtime-info.be/Encyc/

4. Linden H McClure, Professor at University of Colorado Boulder
http://ecee.colorado.edu/~mcclurel/

Professor home pages are always a great resource for any students, you can find out more about course they are taking, links to slides, published papers etc. Especially I found Prof. Linen's home page very useful, it contains various data sheets, links to course slides and other very useful info related to Embedded Systems.

5. Digital Electronics blog
http://digitalelectronics.blogspot.com/

It is a TECHlog on VLSI, Chip Design, Industry News, Opinions, Reviews & much more...
If you are interested in VLSI or Chip design then you would find many resources on the above blog, check out your self.

Thats all for now, many more ideas to write a post upon, would update soon.

Top 20 Semicondutor companies

Knowing about major players in the market is always a good things, it helps to understand how industry is moving, which are the growth areas and then people can decide upon which domain they want to specialize. Following table from ICInsight summarizes trends in Semiconductor space for year 2008.




Some analysis:

1. Wireless is still hot with Broadcomm and Qualcomm showing highest growth for the year, Thanks in part to declining TI's share.

2. Intel still remains at top by a huge margin, also it wasn't affected much by slowing consumer demand in PC segment.

3. All DRAM suppliers suffered huge decline, Hynix of South Korea topping charts with 33% decline.

Link: 53-Point Growth-Rate Delta Within 2008 Top 20 Supplier Ranking http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/bulletins2009/bulletin20090302.html