There’s a group of embedded software developers who are half programmer and half mathematician. You know who you are. You’re using fast Fourier transforms (FFT), coding IIR filters and operating on large matrices. When working with large amounts of data, you’ve found that SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) instructions can really speed things up.   If you work with large floating point numbers, I have some good news. Get twice the throughput of floating point operat...Read More

Natan Linder from the MIT Media Lab visited the Intel Chandler office last week and brought me up to date with his plans for the Luminar Project.  Suffice to say it will be smaller and faster in the near future.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Luminar system here's the video from YouTube. And just in case you are wondering, yes, it is based on an embedded system from Intel, specifically the Intel(r) Embedded Development Board 1-N450.  More info on the board and process...Read More

The Intel Cup Embedded System Design Contest (short for "Intel Cup Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest - Embedded System Design Invitational Contest") was initiated by the Chinese government, hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and is solely sponsored by Intel Corporation since 2002. Held every 2 years, the contest provides an opportunity for top undergraduate students to design a working system based on an assigned Intel embedded platform over a period of three months.   Each tea...Read More

The Atom Dimm boards have successfully booted Windows XP and Fedora 10. Its been a saga, as all board bringups usually are, ranging from using early access silicon, to incorrect BIOS settings, to wrong or missing pullups. But its working now, and a further batch of boards are on order to match up with the carrier board.  This works being done by an internal team in Hudson, MA, so I have still to see a working board myself. But it was a good birthday present to hear of their success this we...Read More

Welcome to the Intel® Embedded Design Center (Intel® EDC) team blog! There are exciting things happening in the Intel® EDC – your one stop shop to designing with embedded Intel® Architecture.  Thousands of users have registered to take advantage of the many resources provided within the Intel EDC like reference designs, platform related collateral including confidential documentation, training, online support and step-by-step guidance.  We value your input so...Read More

We in the embedded industry like to slice and dice markets by application, technology, customers, and any other way that tells a story. When we look at ATCA as a server offering we have to ask ourselves "why ATCA?" and what features make it attractive in certain applications and unattractive in others. Part of my role is to ask this question of the industry and drive action based on the answer. Since telecom equipment providers defined the standard, there's clearly a fit in that market. But wha...Read More

It's been a while since I've heard the word "renaissance" connected to anything except "faire" - you know, those weekend gatherings of jousting knights and lute-playing maidens. But right now, we in the embedded community are on the cusp of a modern renaissance that's anything but fair, middling or mediocre; 2008 marks the dawn of the Embedded Age, and it is going to be nothing less than fantastic.           Embedded: Intel's new growth pillar Our president and CEO, Pau...Read More