Thought Leadership

ECS Stockholm

By Colin Walls

There are countless technical conferences around the world and, considering that it is something of a niche field, embedded software has its fair share of events. In my experience – 30+ years – of attending and presenting at conferences, I have seen numerous events come and go. At any one time, there will be 2-3 annual conferences in the US and a couple in Europe that focus firmly on embedded and have the size and scope to be interesting. At present, a key one in Europe is ECS – Embedded Conference Scandinavia …

ECS has been running for more than a dozen years and I have presented at most of them. This year is no exception. The conference takes place on 5/6 November in Kista [a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden].

This year I have two sessions, both on Wednesday 6 November:

Selecting an Embedded Operating System [at 09:10]

Most modern embedded systems employ an operating system [OS] of some kind, and this necessitates some critical design decisions. Should you obtain a commercially available OS, choose one of the “free” offerings, or develop one in-house? If the acquisition of a commercial OS is planned, how do you make the selection? This session reviews in detail all the facets of the make vs. buy and OS selection decisions – both technical and commercial – for an OS on an embedded design.

Embedded multicore: enablement of heterogeneous OSes and mixed criticality systems [at 14:50]

The use of multicore SoCs in embedded designs is on the increase and there are multiple incentives for this design decision. In this technical webinar, we will review the available multicore architectures and show how they are leveraged with a selection of software configurations. The use of multiple operating systems on heterogeneous multicore devices will be explored, and how this facilitates the design of systems with multiple time domains – basically real-time and non-real-time components. Additionally, the concept of mixed criticality will be introduced – a design approach for systems where safety and certifiability are key requirements. Certification effort and costs can be minimized, while still meeting the requirements of the worldwide authorities.

If you are attending ECS, do stop by and say “Hej!”. In any case, if you would like to get a copy of either of my presentations, please email or contact me via social media.

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/embedded-software/2019/10/28/ecs-stockholm/