One of the key benefits of Intel® architecture (IA) is its scalable performance . With processors ranging from low-power parts to high-end, multi-core beasts, IA covers a wide span of cost, power, and performance levels. This scalability provides a number of important benefits. First and foremost, scalability gives developers a reliable upgrade path . You can add features by moving to higher-performance parts, or you can cost-optimize with lower-performance parts.  What’s more...Read More

With the arrival of the Intel® Atom™ processor N2000 and D2000 series (formerly codenamed “Cedar Trail”), developers have an intriguing new option for high-performance, low-power designs. The new parts are the first Intel® Atom™ processors to be fabricated in a 32 nm process, enabling significant improvements in power consumption along with the addition of major new features. Most notably, the graphics engine has been heavily upgraded, giving the new processo...Read More

Energy efficiency has become a key design requirement across a broad range of embedded markets – whether to stretch battery life in portable devices, to enable fanless designs in harsh environments, or to lower costs in communications infrastructure, to name just a few examples. At the same time, these markets are looking for ever-greater performance and features. To meet these conflicting requirements, OEMs need a hardware platform that combines low power with high performance.
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Unified Threat Management (UTM) can lower the costs of network security by bringing together a full spectrum of technology—such as intrusion detection, firewall, and anti-virus—in a single appliance. To speed UTM devices to market, developers can turn to a new genera­tion of packet-processing software optimized for multi-core Intel® Xeon® processors.  To see how this software works, see the article from Advantech and 6WIND in the latest Embedded Innovator maga...Read More

In a December 14th, 2010 E-cast entitled "Take your Design to the Next Level with Intel® Atom™” sponsored by the Intel® Embedded Alliance, experts from Advantech and Adeneo presented hardware and software details on the first Intel® architecture processor created specifically for embedded designs.   Curt Schwaderer, Technology Editor, moderated the event for OpenSystems Media. Speakers  were Charlie Wu, Product Manager for Advantech’s Embedded Single B...Read More

In the first post of this series , I covered the overall Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and outlined techniques that you can use to “future proof” your embedded design. Now let’s look at a specific application.   Digital signage and electronic gaming are huge and growing industries that depend on embedded electronics, media processing, and complex software for success. In the latest incarnations, these embedded display systems must network with a remote server, interact ...Read More

Intel today announced the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series , the first Intel® architecture (IA) processor designed specifically for embedded applications.  This new processor is highly integrated, with embedded features that significantly lower the bill of materials (BOM) and hardware footprint.   The processor is available in entry-level versions that are suitable for cost-sensitive applications, and for the first time developers can customize the I/O. &#...Read More

Low power is a tough subject to tackle. You have active and standby power issues that come into play. And you must always think system power rather than component power. The Intel® Atom N450 isn't the lowest-power member of the Atom family. But if you consider power along with feature integration and system power and performance, the new N450 may be the very best choice for your low-power embedded system design. The processor is already finding use in products destined for automotive, indu...Read More