issue 87 - Embedded systems newsletter

Embedded systems #87

This week big news is the “deep investment” of Intel Corporation in RISC-V . That’s for sure the biggest investment ever toward the open hardware community and movement. It makes me happy, I hope it has the same effect on you! I hope as well that the tech articles I found for you this week will please you. If you like the issue, please, share it with your colleagues. It helps the newsletter very much!

Happy reading!

Thank you to Ken Shirriff for the header’s picture.

Articles

So you want to build an embedded Linux system?
A primer on how embedded Linux systems are developed, plus an exploration of the hardware and software ecosystems of ten different commonly-available CPUs.

Handling argc==0 in the kernel
Or how to fix properly, in the Linux Kernel, the potential vulnerabilities caused by the ways args are handled.

Some Were Meant for C - The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language
Others developers who doesn’t do C sometimes look at us with a bit of pity. This paper helps us to argue why C is good and why we should be proud “C is not a language I use because I’m stuck with it; I use it for positive reasons.

How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer
This article from 2019 is doing a great job at describing the context and the failure that lead to the catastrophic crashes we all know. That’s not the reason why I’m sharing it with you. The reason is the following quote that you can read in it. Is it fair? My personal point of view: NO. what’s yours?I believe the relative ease — not to mention the lack of tangible cost — of software updates has created a cultural laziness within the software engineering community.

Formal Reasoning About Programs
It is a book on the Coq proof assistant and techniques for proving correctness of programs. And as well, It is an almost 2 years of effort, open source

C++ to the RISCue! A Practical Guide for Embedded C++20 - Kris Jusiak - CppCon 2021
A video case study of the tools available by the end of 2021 for embedded systems development with C++20. Very informative!

Working with Strings in Embedded C++
In his article, Niall Cooling goes through all the possibilities available with their advantages and disadvantages when you want to use them on a bare metal system.

DIY 3D Lidar
Like the author shares it in the introduction, 3D Lidar are rather expensive. Thousands of dollars. This article describes how to build one yourself, rather good, for less then $100.

Signs of life from the first open source silicon chips
Matt Venn demonstrates signs of life from the first Google sponsored open source ASIC shuttle service. His latest newsletter has the details along with a $100 discount for his Zero to ASIC course.

Business

Understanding the global chip shortages
This paper is a deep analysis down to the root causes of the global chip shortages.

Tools

PipelineC hardware description language
PipelineC is trying to find a middle ground between traditional hardware description languages and the admirable though complex goals of current industry ‘C to hardware’ high level synthesis tools. Steps towards this goal namely include auto-pipelining like HLS tools can do, but also includes several other digital design specific features turning familiar C into an easy HDL.

Education

Computer Architecture, ETH Zürich, Fall 2021
All the 24 lectures with the slides are online in this YouTube playlist. This is great content for whom who wants to learn properly computer architecture.

Skills/Knowledge required to become a champion Embedded Software Developer.
For the beginners among us who ask themselves what skills they should try add to their toolset. This is a list for you. Hint: This is not all about tech.

Jobs

Verily Life Sciences, Embedded Software Engineer, Full-time, South San Francisco, CA
Verily, an Alphabet company, lives at the intersection of technology, data science and healthcare. Our mission is to make the world’s health data useful so that people enjoy longer and healthier lives.

Misc

Thanks to a glitch, some Seattle Mazda drivers can’t tune their radios away from KUOW
Mazda infotainment bricks remotely by KUOW Seattle radio station. Just a picture without extension from my research!