The Embedded & Gadgets

The Car Drived by Wire

By Ron Wilson, Executive Editor EDN Mag. I see from the morning news that Toyota’s adventure into the world of embedded software is going badly. The company’s second attempt to find a quick fix for unintended acceleration in its conventionally powered vehicles is barely under way, and evidence is already emerging that the underlying problem is likely in the engine controller, not in the pedal’s mechanical assembly. Now we hear from Japan that the Prius, Toyota’s golden child, has a...

An open-source package-management system for Windows

by Mary Jo Foley Microsoft is continuing its efforts to attract more open-source developers to make their wares available on Windows. The latest component of that strategy is CoApp, a new open-source package-management platform that one of the company’s developers is starting to assemble. The goal of CoApp is to assemble in a single place a “community-driven package-management system” and associated tools to encourage the development and maintenance of open-source applications on...

Intel vs. AMD: Does the CPU really matter?

Posted by David Chernicoff With the knowledge in hand that AMD was announcing their Opteron 6000 series of CPUs this week in response to last week’s release of Intel’s 5600 Xeon, I started talking to the folks responsible for actually making the purchasing decisions for a few large SMB customers as well as consultants to Fortune 500-size datacenter customers. I asked them one simple question; does the processor in the box affect the purchase decision? The answer was a mixed bag, but...

Toyota throttles Will Studies by NASA

U.S. automotive safety regulators have enlisted NASA scientists to help solve the mystery surrounding Toyota's electronic throttles, and whether they are the cause of runaway vehicles. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also said experts from the National Academy of Sciences will examine the problem of "unintended acceleration" across the auto industry. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will work with NASA engineers specializing in electronic systems, electromagnetic...

AMD brings Bobcat with 1:1 possibilities

OLPC’s first laptop, the XO has been both praised and criticized for many things. Perhaps most significant was its incredibly low power consumption, critical for use in areas with very limited electrical capacity. Key to this power consumption was the AMD Geode processor, an utterly anemic piece of hardware whose performance could be excused for its .8W appetite. Yesterday, however, the company announced a new class of processors, called Bobcat, to be released in 2011 and designed to...