Loring's 'Laments'

Quo Vadis, VPX?

December, 2009
By: lw

It’s no surprise that in early December VITA took a critical role in tying together the loose ends from the ad hoc OpenVPX Marketing Group to create the VPX Marketing Alliance, contributing a new acronymn to the annals of embedded computing: VMA. This organization takes responsibility not only for VPX and OpenVPX, but for VPX REDI as well, plus any coming extensions to the family of standards. The near-term extensions will include optical and RF communications.

Two quotes from Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy come to mind here – the first on the necessity of uniting standards efforts behind a “single arrowhead,” the second on the need to temper committee enthusiasm over any paper standard it develops with the realization that “Standard equals volume shipped.”

By relying on the historical headstart VME had over the PCI-based server world, VMA can lean heavily on the concept of a single arrowhead. If only ATCA could rely on the historical work of PCI-SIG in a similar fashion, there might be a better story to tell, but there are one, two, many PCI’s. PCI does not equal PCI Express does not equal ATCA/MicroTCA, thus denying the SIG the benefit of that single arrowhead.

But that arrowhead advantage can be lost as OpenVPX enters new worlds. As VMA seeks to expand beyond backplane-module-chassis into broader definitions of interconnect in optical and wireless worlds, it would behoove the organization to remember that unified support of a suite of standards often represents merely the baseline of driving success. If we look at the history of communication alliances, marketing forums in the past decade often had to shift gears in sudden and unexpected ways:

• Optical Internetworking Forum, as a creature born of carriers in a long-haul transport environment, never intended to create physical-layer standards for optical interfaces operating at the physical layer, particularly in the enterprise and server-cluster realm. It certainly never intended to absorb and take on the work of the Network Processing Forum. But as NPF crashed and burned as designers decided to look to other options than an NPU, suddenly the OIF looked like the logical place to hammer out physical standards for microprocessors interfacing with short-reach optics. Who’d a thunk it?

• DSL Forum touting Digital Subscriber Line, and ATM Forum touting Asynchronous Transfer Mode, would not have considered their fortunes identical ten years ago, and would not have seen a reason to subsume their fates under a common header. And IP/MPLS Forum certainly approached broadband applications from an orthogonal direction to both groups, in particular as a direct competitor to ATM Forum. Yet somehow, they all seemed to coalesce into the Broadband Forum, despite the best intentions of marketing wars.

• Trusted Computing Group began life as an embedded processor and module alliance specializing in the tamper-proof component known as the Trusted Platform Module. But the lack of an effective organization promoting higher-layer IT security prodded TCG into expanding into such unexpected realms as secure storage, secure mobile phones, and distributed network access control.

Does this imply that VMA will one day absorb or seek peace with the RapidIO Trade Association, or even the PCI-SIG? Not necessarily, but such a marriage of convenience cannot be ruled out. The lesson to be learned from OIF, TCG and Broadband Forum is that the physical pinout and form factor, even the Layer 2 and 3 protocol details, do not matter nearly as much as bringing together engineering and programming groups who are exploring the same application space, looking for common methods that work across media types. Given that VITA wants to aid in the implementation of ANSI standards, it should look to the example of ITU-T study groups, such as SG 11 (covering signaling methods) and SG 15 (covering optical transport standards on lower layers). The study groups are seen as neutral realms where developers from IEEE and ANSI can sit down and break bread.

VMA need not overtly extend a peace pipe to any particular group like RTA or PCI-SIG. Rather, it should drive the hell out of VPX standards, while keeping an open mind about bringing others into the tents of common backplanes, high-speed serial and parallel communication options, as well as unique form factors to serve future embedded markets. The necessary elements of the equation are the McNealy Factors of common arrowhead and volumes shipped. The sufficient elements of a larger VMA involve being open to new members and new ideas, while being flexible enough to rapidly morph or expand its entire raison d’être.

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MontaVista and the binary ties that bind

November, 2009
By: lw

Our fearless leader Ray Alderman already has weighed in illustriously on reasons to fear the Intel-Wind River merger. On Nov. 11, Cavium Networks announced its acquisition of MontaVista Software, an event the open-source community might see as just as frightening, albeit at smaller levels. Now, the MontaVista brand has just as great a chance of standing as a separate entity as the Wind River brand (Good? Next to nil?), so the acquisition itself is not a cause for alarm. It’s just that M&A deals like these show that many corporations still do not grasp the necessary elements that must be preserved for open systems to work on both hardware and software levels.

Don’t get us wrong. When a large vertically integrated software house like Microsoft, Google or EMC-VMWare (maybe even Red Hat, I suppose) acquires a small software developer to add a missing module to a framework, the larger company is simply expanding its portfolio and playing the big-fish-eating-little-fish game. When a hardware OEM snaps up a company making a new type of product or a software house developing products unique for the hardware, a rational expansion has occurred.

But when a semiconductor specialist or OEM picks up an RTOS, development tool, firmware or communication-protocol company that develops products for several hardware binary interfaces, the acquiring company is playing a market elimination game. And when this involves companies who develop for Linux or open-source worlds, the problem is magnified.

Sometimes, an open-source company’s own strategy to monetize can doom an open product.  NextHop Technologies Inc., for example, commercialized the popular GateD routing software from the University of Michigan.  Large OEMs like Huawei ended up licensing GateD.  But when open-source routing failed to be profitable, NextHop focused on 802.11 Wi-Fi software and ended up being acquired by the relatively unkn0wn wireless network company U4EA Technologies.  We still haven’t learned what happened to all that open-source route code!

We have seen the Intel and Cavium strategies before, to be sure. Intel itself picked up Trillium Digital Systems at the end of the 1990s to corner a communication protocol market. Broadcom snapped up the popular LVL7 Systems software company, and NetPlane Systems was traded (batted around, actually) among Conexant, Mindspeed and Motorola Computer Systems for years. In all cases, the acquisition removed the effectiveness and breadth of the underlying software.

No, we’re not about to call for laws that limit the ability of companies to acquire players that offer software for several hardware binaries. That’s capitalism. But it’s important to point out that a true commitment to open systems means, at the very least, not trying to corner a market for a software company that works in several binary architectures. In general, keeping software truly open requires allowing as much software independence in the ISV community as possible.

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Are DSPs destined for the “Do Not Fly” list?

August, 2009

Don’t look now, but standard DSP processors are being displaced rapidly on airborne intelligence and communication platforms. It’s no surprise to see small UAVs or satellites dispense with parallel banks of DSPs in favor of ASSPs or FPGAs. The problem for DSP vendors is that a trend that begins in avionics and airborne electronic warfare is expanding to include ground-based and even sea-based systems in virtually all realms of C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance).

For close to 20 years, the developers of ASICs and FPGAs promised that sooner or later, their IP libraries for signal-processing functions would be good enough to challenge the big shots like the Texas Instruments TMS320. In the 1990s, LSI Logic Corp. made claims for its FIR and IIR filter suite that still could not overcome the fact that the NRE costs for ASICs made them all but unthinkable for many airborne applications.

Now, however, the DSP slices from all major FPGA vendors, such as Xilinx’s Xtreme DSP, are ready for prime time, particularly when placed on a single device with a RISC engine for control. Actel Corp. also is making inroads in offering FPGAs for ruggedized applications. As airborne systems turn from 1553 to small PMC and AMC cards, signal processing platforms turn to FPGAs as much for necessity in footprint as for performance.

This trend impacts several architectures such as Analog Devices Inc.’s SHARC, but is particularly relevant for TI’s 320C640 family. Maybe it’s no accident that TI has been emphasizing its analog talents more than its DSP suites of late. Maybe the days of DSP in standard embedded military and civilian-aerospace subsystems are numbered.