ETJ

It's a slow news day here at Embedded Technology Journal, so we're taking this summertime opportunity to review a bit of our world by numbers. Perhaps some of these illuminating factoids will give you some good business ideas. Or just help you win a bar bet.

According to Microsoft’s own research conducted as it was developing Vista, the second most-popular computer activity is playing games. In terms of time spent in front of the computer, the only thing that trumps games is surfing the Web. These ranked above email, music, shopping – and work.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are all about zigging while everyone else zags. You’ve got your engineering skills down, but what about that dreaded word, marketing? In a world where Pet Rocks sell by the millions, and where buggy and expensive operating systems outsell small, inexpensive, and reliable ones, marketing clearly plays a big role. There’s no need to sell your soul – just know how to sell your product.

In this week’s installment, we examine “the curse of knowledge.” That’s what happens when you know more about your product or service than your customers do. Knowing too much is a liability when it comes time to sell it to someone else. You need to selectively forget what you know and re-learn your product from a customer’s perspective. Let’s look at a few examples.

This week, MIPS Technologies announced that it's scored another TV set-top box design win. Specifically, the company proudly bragged that NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors) is using the MIPS 24K processor core in its PNX85500 HDTV chip. It’s the first TV chip to be fabricated in 45-nm technology, a significant if short-lived distinction.

With all appropriate kudos to MIPS and NXP, the more interesting story here is why NXP chose to use a MIPS processor. The short answer is, because they had used MIPS before. In a word, inertia.

Inertia is a powerful force, both in physics and in embedded-systems engineering. “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” is a common expression around many engineering labs (or it should be). Engineering is all about building on what you’ve created before. Reinventing the wheel is frowned upon; extending upon proven and stable platforms is the way forward.

I’m always suspicious when a PowerPoint slide says we’re at a turning point in history. It strikes me as egotistical to think that today is somehow qualitatively different from yesterday. Sure, chips always get faster and software always gets more complex – how is that an inflection point? You’re just trying to sell me something, aren’t you?

The exception to this self-imposed rule is multicore microprocessors. I really do think that multicore is a game-changer. It makes hardware design different, it makes software design different, it makes EDA and software-development tools different, and it makes jobs different. Multicore isn’t just “more better faster.” It’s time to think different.

Some things were just made to go together (peanut butter and jelly) and some just weren’t, (those two teenagers in the Classmates.com pop-up ads). Now the embedded industry has a new mashup: Intel and Wind River Systems. The #1 chipmaker has hooked up with the #1 embedded-software company. Is this a match made in heaven or a disaster waiting to happen?

So far, I like the deal. It draws public attention to the oft-neglected embedded market, it gives Linux a boost (possibly at the expense of Microsoft), and it underscores Intel’s commitment to embedded systems. As long as PC sales were booming, Intel and AMD had an on-again, off-again relationship with embedded designers. Sometimes they liked us and sometimes they ignored us. Now that Intel has put down serious money on embedded software, we can safely assume the company is now with us for the long haul.

"There are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." With apologies to Mark Twain (or possibly Benjamin Disraeli or maybe Henry Du Pré Labouchère), benchmarks have been used and abused ever since there have been computers. Like the question about when the first auto race was held (“as soon as the second automobile was built”), the question of who makes the fastest computer has beguiled and bedeviled engineers for ages. Now, just maybe, we may be making progress toward settling that dispute.

The bigger the computer, the bigger the benchmark. Conversely, testing just the microprocessor by itself requires only the simplest of code loops – or so it might appear. But even the simplest benchmark distorts the true nature of the processor you’re testing, as any “marketing engineer” can tell you. No matter what you measure – clock speed, arithmetic agility, procedural proficiency, or what have you – you’re always leaving something out. No synthetic test can truly encapsulate all the goodness (and badness) of a microprocessor.