{"id":8,"date":"2006-07-29T16:51:24","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T14:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appinf.com\/poco\/blog\/?p=8"},"modified":"2006-07-29T16:51:24","modified_gmt":"2006-07-29T14:51:24","slug":"where-is-embedded-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Where is embedded going"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, I have attended Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando. The trip was well worth it, there is a lot of stuff going on in the microcontroller world. The most remarkable trend is blurring the line between 8-bit and 32-bit world – Freescale now provides hardware and software tools compatibility. A significant trend also is from 8 straight to 32 bit, skipping 16-bit chips altogether. And then, Freescale and IBM are back in bed on Power architecture. From the operating system point of view – there were numerous RTOS vendors present offering microkernel (of which I am a fan, btw) products, but Linux seems to be ubiquitous (and pushed by Freescale, too). I think we’ll see the history repeated once again (Betamax, TokenRing, Amiga anyone?) – Linux will win. Not because it is best, but because it is good enough (sigh), vendor neutral and open.<\/p>\n

Now where does C++ fit into this picture? In Orlando, I’ve heard a little bit about C++ – and nothing about Java, thankfully \ud83d\ude09 – QNX and Trolltech were there. One comment (by a uCLinux guy) stung me: “C++ is a memory hog”. I refrained from an exchange of opinions because it would most likely be counter productive – from an 8-bit, memory constrained MMU-less perspective, C++ as a hog may be a valid opinion. But 8-bit is headed toward history, even in microcontroller world. And C++ will thrive in the embedded world for the same reason it has thrived elsewhere – higher level of abstraction (meaning more design power) at minimum (often zero) performance price and compatibility with C.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>The highlight of the conference was definitely the closing session speech. They brought in a living legend – Neil Armstrong. I was 4 years old when the man made the step and I do remember it. Engineer to the bone and a very humble human being, he gave an inspiring and motivating speech sprinkled with a good dose of humor. My favorite was the description of how, on their journey to the Moon, they were regularly called from the Earth in a following manner: “Hello Apollo 11, this is Houston.”.
\n“I could never figure out why they kept on saying that.” – he said – “I mean, who else could it be?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, I have attended Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando. The trip was well worth it, there is a lot of stuff going on in the microcontroller world. The most remarkable trend is blurring the line between 8-bit and 32-bit world – Freescale now provides hardware and software tools compatibility. A significant trend also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}