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2009 Embedded Hardware/Software Design Preferences: Design Starts, Completions, Cancellations, Processor/Software Utilization
Embedded Market Forecasters, July 2009
Profound economic conditions spawn profound opportunities and challenges. As in any economic contest there will be winners, losers and those that can’t tell the difference. Market uncertainties challenge vendors and OEMs alike to find new niches, competitive advantages and markets that will remain stable while enjoying growth potential.
History has shown that radical upheavals cast aside the staus quo and clears the way for new ventures to succeed. This has ben historically followed by sustained periods of growth that exceeded the size and scope of the previous incarnation. The trick, of course, has been to discover the new growth markets and to grab a secure foothold. This is where market intelligence provides value.
The embedded marketplace for developers has undertaken a radical upheaval, driven by economic and technical forces that are unyielding and destined to change the embedded landscape. In this report, EMF documents its findings of developer preferences based upon the responses of more than four hundred eighty embedded developers to the detailed 2009 EMF survey.
One should expect continued changes in COTS availability, new bus architectures, high speed interconnects and design complexities. EMF’s year-over-year data continues to show that in-house developments for Linux and communication middleware fail to produce the same outcomes as respective commercial offerings. In time Darwinian market processes will push these in-house efforts – and those that espouse them – to the side of the road for emerging growth markets.
These in return will cause a “ripple-down” effect on software design complexities and create a requirement for new and better tool sets to accommodate multicore and multithreaded technologies. Looking ahead we expect that the embedded industry will experience a series of hardware and architectural changes necessitating a redeployment of developed software to new hardware interfaces. This will be of particular concern to military and avionics programs that are measured in decades, not in years.
Although these changes are initially manifesting in hardware - boards, busses and chips – software developers will also feel the impact as multicore processors and systems-within-systems opportunities create new demands on their abilities.
We are at a unique time in the history of development, application and utilization of technology. Imagine the challenges:
- Developers are faced with increased design complexities, diminishing time-to-market requirements, familiar components being brought to end-of-life, and changing development processes and tool availability.
- COTS users (e.g., military, avionics, telecom, etc.) are learning that COTS availability is driven by a diminishing number of embedded vertical markets that continue to supply high performance components and boards as well as interconnect technologies. Chip and board manufacturers are moving to the high volume and lower quality processors used in consumer electronic devices that have very short life spans as compared to the long term needs of major systems deployment.
- The largest segments of the embedded/enterprise marketplace are recognizing the importance of systems development and the required complexities of systems-within-systems that go far beyond design and development processes.
- OEMs and systems integrators are insisting on a demonstartabe enhanced ROI as a prerequisite to investing in newer tools
Notwithstanding significant embedded market downturns in 2002 through 2003 and the recovery during 2004 into 2008, the embedded developer responses to the 2009 Embedded Market Forecasters survey showed a consistency in the use of development tools, programming languages, methodologies, and development tools budgets, concomitant with an increase in design complexity. Design delays and design cancellations remained consistent with last year’s survey. EMF continued the use of multiple filtering capabilities and the ability to simultaneously display up to five columns of filtered cross tabs – thereby enabling EMF and subscribers to establish relationships and correlations between the survey data. It is interesting to observe which processes and methodologies developers are using and which they believe to be best practices.
In addition, we tracked developer preferences for RTOS, IDE, communication middleware, and simulation-modeling vendors (by specific product). EMF asked developers which of these they were 1) familiar with, 2) are currently using, 3) have shipped a product with (if applicable), and, 4) intend to use in the next 12 months. Cross tabs permit EMF (and the reader, if interested) to look at the habits and preferences of developers using (or even as important – not using) a specific product or product category, a processor or family of processors, development processes (or perceived “best practices”), etc.
In addition to continuing to monitor the use of FPGAs and DSPs in embedded designs, as well as 128-bit and 24-bit chips, EMF continued reporting on
dual core, multicore (>2) and multithreading use to the 2009 database. Microsoft’s Windows XP Embedded proved that last year’s rapid appearance as the most frequently used target OS was no fluke (now tied with CE as the leading target OS). The use of Linux as an OS in embedded designs continues to grow, but the larger portion of Linux usage again was from free downloads bypassing traditional embedded Linux tools vendors. The larger market for Linux development tools has moved decidedly from traditional Linux tool vendors to the vendors that offer OS agnostic IDEs (e.g., Wind River, Green Hills, and Mentor Graphics), among others. 2009 EMF data showed that Linux design outcomes using traditional vendors (Monta Vista, LynuxWorks, and Wind River) were superior to the “roll your own” Linux design efforts.
The proliferation of integrated Linux capabilities provided by traditional RTOS vendors, with Wind River, Mentor Graphics, LynuxWorks and Green Hills providing superior development environments together with their established operating systems meant trouble for traditional vendors other than Monta Vista. With the leading RTOS vendors providing memory protected operating environments that permit the use of multiple OSes in a single system, and the ability to use appropriate non-realtime OSes in concert with realtime OSes, the character of the operating system market has, not surprisingly, changed dramatically.
It is clear from our supply side discussions that embedded vendors are regrouping in the wake of the economic downturn and that they are looking to new trends in the rebound of the embedded marketplace. This rebound is predicated on OEMs, systems integrators and others finding new niches for growth. A downturn in A&D funding has driven embedded vendors to look to other markets – in particular medical. However the dynamics of this market segment is substantially different from the mil-aero and transportation markets where safety/security was the primary driving forces. Let’s face it, the fastest physiological measurement (ECG) is 100 Hz – and who needs a nano-second response OS for this application?
These new opportunities include enterprise applications – embedded mission-critical requirements are far more demanding than the 5-nines requirements of embedded and fault tolerant designs. In addition, military procurements are moving towards a software-centric model with cross platform interoperability being the long-term goal rather than software being designed for hardware-specific requirements. The large prime contractors that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on software and software tools are beginning to look internally at design outcomes and seek improvements (and thereby savings).
There is no better place to re-plan strategic efforts than to take a comprehensive look at one’s customers: what’s going right; what’s going wrong; where are the opportunities to address developer needs. Opportunities arise as market conditions necessitate new design methods, new priorities to address rapidly changing market conditions, and the economics of the embedded design process.
There has been a dramatic reported improvement in the design process. During the period 2002 through 2004, EMF’s annual survey of embedded developers consistently reported that nearly 30% of final designs were not within 50% of pre-design expectations. This can be called “design failure”. From 2005 through 2008, developers reported that design outcomes improved significantly (much of it having to do with enhanced IDEs and simulation-modeling tools), but the question was left unanswered as to whether this was a chance result or a decided change in design processes. The 2009 survey showed further enhanced design outcomes compared with the 2005-2008 results, indicating that design practices are changing for the better (each year design outcomes improved) – although with the increase in design complexity there remains a considerable up-side for embedded vendors.
Executives of companies that purchase software, boards, tools, etc., have become aware of the enormous cost of design shortcomings. These problems translate into opportunities for embedded tool vendors that have solutions to correct these costly deficiencies. It’s important for embedded vendors to understand what their customers are experiencing and what chips, software, and tools are in current use.
Also available
2009 Market Intelligence Program
2009 EMF Embedded Executive Dashboard
2009 Embedded Development Tools and RTOSes: World Markets, User Perspectives and Strategic Issues
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