Embedded Wireless Tools & Software Embedded Computing

boards & solutions + Combined Print Magazine for the European Embedded Market October 05/15

Special Features: Embedded Wireless Tools & Software Embedded Computing

Viewpoint

Dear Readers, There is no doubt – the Internet changed our behaviour and therefore our daily life since it started approximately 20 years ago. During this period – I would like to call it the first step – the Internet developed to an universal information platform, knowledge base, and distribution channel. Nowadays if you need information about any topic you search in the Internet and you will get it with just one click. If you want to buy a specific product – you´ll find it in the Internet - mostly for a lower price. But there was still the interaction of humans needed. And the wireless communication enabled us to access the internet from nearly any place in the world at any time we like. But now it seemed that we are at a turning point and will do the second step into the Internet of Things (IoT) in which no human interaction is needed any longer. The connected devices will talk to each other undependable mostly via wireless links.

Our cover story starting at page 6 shows that the Internet of Things is not a real new thing but an optimal combination of still existing technologies. The disciplines of sensor technology, data preparation and data processing, data output, actuator engineering, connectivity and security come together in the Internet of Things. The terms IoT and the very closely related Industry 4.0 are now widely recognised in the industry and a starting point for further discussions. IoT applications will affect any of the traditional market segments like automotive, consumer, healthcare, high-rel, and renewable energies, and the industrial area is also supported with applications such as M2M and Industry 4.0. Communication between machines (M2M) has been already an important area for decades. However, the Internet, with its infrastructure and the increasing spread of products such as PCs, tablets, smart- phones, and new semiconductor products, has not only shaken up the market completely but also permitted totally new approaches to solutions in areas which were not previously relevant at all.

But what about security? Current manufacturers are still developing products using old and entrenched supply chain, engineering, and QA processes that weren’t designed for the complexities of highly-connected smart devices nowadays. Likewise, engineering teams are utilizing an increasingly diverse set of suppliers and relying on third- party software where possible to save developer time, all while trying to satisfy the business and market thirst for these new capabilities. Unfortunately, many software development teams treat security as an afterthought, running only basic checks, if any, during their QA cycle. But there is a solution. The GrammaTech article starting at page 14 introduces CodeSonar, a binary analysis technology which provides developers with the ability to evaluate, check, and inspect third-party code, and provides businesses with more options within their supply chain, enabling them to utilize software from new, innovative companies that might not have an established reputation. When source code is available, you can use CodeSonar in mixed source/binary mode, analyzing complete applications.

And if you run over the pages of this issue you´ll find more useful information about the ongoing activities in the IoT. Enjoy!

Yours Sincerely

Wolfgang Patelay Editor

3 October 2015 Contents

Viewpoint 3 Cover Story: IoT: classic and also Cover Story quite different 6 IoT: classic and also quite different 6 This article shows that the Inter- net of Things is not a totally new technology – it is based on Tools & Software already existing technologies which are now combined to cre- The needed impact of the ate the ubiquitous connectivity of IoT on software engineering 14 anything. Digital signatures: fighting firmware The needed impact of the IoT on software hacking and hardware cloning 18 engineering 14 Embedded Computing The Internet of Things is a paradigm impacting our daily life for Robust IoT – safety begins good or bad. IoT software needs security by design, therefore it is with hardware 20 a business imperative. Manufac- turers must evaluate the cyber New premium processor performance threats and level of exposure of for x86 low-power designs 24 IoT devices, implementing all necessary design checks and counter- Identifying challenges in future measures against the accelerating set of menaces. 100G backplane designs 28 Digital signatures: fighting firmware Microcontrollers hacking and hardware cloning 18 Security considerations for embedded In the age of the IoT, firmware designs in the new connected world 30 attacks are becoming an increasing danger. Digital signatures can protect embedded applications Embedded Wireless against hacking and prevent the cloning of hardware. Dual wireless protocol solution for the Internet of Things 34 Robust IoT – safety begins LTE and optimizing LTE Advanced with hardware 20 for machine-type communications 37 While the project described in this article called for a very spe- Fast and secure roaming for wireless cific housing to suit the customer applications on public transport 39 needs, many mobile IoT applications can already be achieved using standard systems. Network- Product News 40-47 ing of the embedded world is thus within reach – even if the environmental conditions become somewhat harder.

New premium processor performance for x86 low-power designs 24 The new Intel Pentium and Cele- ron SoC processors (codenamed Braswell) are impressive with their massive plus in graphics and more balanced overall performance. But why is this high level performance necessary on a 4-watt Scenario Design Power and what makes these new top-class low- Cover Photo: power systems so special?. EBV ELEKTRONIK

October 2015 4

Cover Story IoT: classic and also quite different

By Thomas Staudinger, EBV Elektronik

This article shows that the Internet of Things is not a totally new technology – it is based on already existing technologies which are now combined to create the ubiquitous connectivity of anything.

Strictly speaking, the Internet of Things and a patient database in the Cloud. At inter- ment these data can then be seen by friends. (IoT) is not a new venture for EBV Elek- vals throughout the day measurements of the In these applications, unlike in the medical tronik. EBV has, for many years, been work- blood sugar level are recorded and transmitted application, no great value is placed on data ing on topics which are now specific to IoT or to the smartphone by Bluetooth Low Energy security, since it is up to the users to decide directly associated with it, but which were not (BLE).The patient can use the associated app whether or not to share their data publicly. classified as IoT before the term was coined. to document other things such as food intake. The disciplines of sensor technology, data They also receive advice and recommenda- The industrial area is also supported with preparation and data processing, data output, tions via the app about correct diet and fluid applications such as M2M and Industry 4.0. actuator engineering, connectivity and secu- intake. The data are bundled together from One important area is NFC – dual interface rity come together in the Internet of Things the app and transmitted in encrypted form to programming of motors (motor control unit) – and EBV has been continuously active in all a patient database. Professional medical per- by mobile NFC. Applications of this type are these areas for over a decade. The terms IoT sonnel can then access these data and provide to be found in the Industry 4.0 area, where and the very closely related Industry 4.0 are the patient with appropriate advice and notifi- displays and touchpads on machines are being now widely recognised and a starting point cations, such as about the insulin dosage to be replaced by tablets. Also of interest is the net- for further discussions. given. This system can also be supplemented working of electrical energy storage devices by an automatic or semi-automatic insulin and the newly planned business models of One of the main strengths of EBV for many pump, attached to the patient body. the energy suppliers. For example, one of years has been its ability to combine these these business models enables energy storage individual areas and from this combination Another example from the area of personal devices to be filled from various renewable develop new potential for its clients. For some health and fitness is the activity tracker or energy sources (solar, wind, bio, hydro…) years, this has found expression in the seg- activity monitor. Numerous versions of these several times a day (up to 3 times) and for the ments on which EBV has focused: on the one are now commercially available, from sim- energy to be accessed at peak times each day. hand, the classic market segments including ple step counters to complex sports watches, The smart meter gateway and the smart meter the automotive, consumer, healthcare, high- which measure the blood oxygen saturation are absolute necessities for this. Such a model rel and renewable energies segments and, on and heartbeat of the user. There are differ- is particularly appropriate in Germany for the the other hand, the technology-driven FPGA, ences in the features and the precision. Most owners of solar power systems which have identification, LightSpeed and RF and wire- devices have one thing in common, namely a come to the end of their feed-in compensation less segments. Two examples from the health- BLE connection to a smartphone, an associ- period, as they will now achieve a faster return care market segment clearly show the extent ated app and/or an interface to the most pop- on their investment in their energy storage to which technology is used in it: A diabetes ular fitness and running apps. The data are devices with this model. In Germany there are management system essentially consists of a usually sent by the smartphone to the Cloud already 60,000 compensation schemes for pri- blood glucose meter, an app on a smartphone in unencrypted form. By private arrange- vate homeowners which are due to expire in

October 2015 6

Cover Story

2018. Since these installations are all still func- their own professional (and also private) envi- how, in bringing their new product to market tioning well and generate electricity at the cost ronments, so that they can leverage its growing as soon as possible. At the same time, EBV of their upkeep it is advantageous to install a potential in the best way possible. Thus, EBV explicitly addresses the security risks which storage device. always asks itself a single fundamental ques- arise with the data transmission, for at the end tion: how can we help our customers to develop of the day an appropriate security solution can Communication between machines (M2M, a solution that is smart, has a permanent data always be found using suitable semiconductor machine-to-machine) has been an important connection with the outside world and enables components and appropriate software. area for EBV for decades. However, the Inter- secure communication? In short: it is about net, with its infrastructure and the increasing being smart, secure and connected everywhere. In principle the IoT connects different mar- spread of products such as PCs, tablets, smart- kets which have existed until now as essen- phones and new semiconductor products, has With its market matrix technology, EBV Elek- tially isolated solutions, in the same way that not only shaken up the market completely but tronik already has a very good initial approach the Internet networks together stand-alone also permitted totally new approaches to solu- to determining which technology can pro- computers and PCs. This has blurred the lines tions in areas which were not previously rele- vide what added value to the corresponding that used to separate many applications from vant at all. application, in order to achieve a competi- each other. In this way, the previous sharp tively viable product. With the IoT, however, divisions between many applications are soft- One good example of how EBV Elektronik is the challenges facing EBV clients also change, ened. Good examples of this include sports- driving interdisciplinary thinking with net- when, for example, an existing autonomous wear that can now contain sensors or pieces worked solutions is the science magazine The device needs to be connected to the Internet of furniture with built-in recharging units for Quintessence, where EBV has been reporting or to a Cloud solution. This connection also wireless charging of mobile devices. Typically, on new ways of using these technologies in brings with it new requirements. For example, the sportswear or furniture manufacturers special issues since 2007. The company arti- a wireless module in combination with the were previously not electronics specialists, so cles in The Quintessence always look at the corresponding software solution may provide they require suitable partners to implement bigger picture in order to generate inspiration the desired connectivity, while an appropri- the electronics functionality for them while for new products by interlinking different cat- ate security solution may provide the corre- taking into account characteristics of the cor- egories of items and talking about work that sponding data security for authentication and responding solution from all possible angles. crosses various areas. The most recent issues, data exchange. EBV shows these companies the possibili- for example, have looked at sensor technology, ties offered by the technologies and provides the Internet of Things, cyber security, Cloud EBV customers know their core products introductions to suitable partners who are technology and Industry 4.0, while the next inside out – these are often autonomous able to address the individual requirements issue will be devoted to smart systems. devices – and the customers are often world of the corresponding area of business or solu- leaders or hidden champions in their sector. tion in an appropriate way. For example, EBV As EBV has already been working in the areas However, as far as RF technology and security Elektronik helped a major sportswear manu- which are now known as the Internet of Things are concerned, in many cases these companies facturer to incorporate a pulse rate sensor in or Industry 4.0, more than120 EBV field appli- have had little or no involvement until now, outerwear and pressure sensors in running cation engineers (FAEs) and other specialists so that in many instances they do not have shoes. These applications often require a flex- view these terms more as catchphrases which enough of the appropriate resources in-house ible board for the semiconductor connection. are often overemphasised in the press in order to meet the challenges of the IoT. This is where to have public appeal. It is much more import- EBV Elektronik comes in, as it has a particular Similarly, there are watch manufacturers with ant to make developers and decision makers strength in its ability to assist these customers a very long tradition and an excellent name in clearly aware of the importance of the IoT in with appropriate resources and specific know- the market who are now beginning to market

October 2015 8

Cover Story

volumes transmitted over the RF interface. This reduces the workload of the frequency band used while reducing the power needed for transmission. It is precisely in such cases - where sensor data are to be captured in the field, possibly pre-processed and then transmitted onwards - that low power design is often a very important topic. One good example of this is a battery-operated temperature sensor which transmits its data over an RF connection to a computer. The smaller the energy requirement for the switching, the longer the sensor system is able to operate without a battery recharge and the lower the maintenance cost will be. Above all, the low power microcontrollers produced by Atmel, Freescale, NXP and STMicroelectronics, which contain an ultra-low power processor core from ARM, now enable astonishingly long battery lifetimes.

The data processing is followed by actuator control, so the EBV programme includes a wide range of motor drivers for the regulation and control of motors and also offers many possible solutions for smart lighting. Smart lighting involves intelligent lighting solutions – including the control of brightness and colour temperature.

The catchword Industry 4.0 refers to a high level of networking in the manufacturing area. One relatively new aspect in this area is a smartwatch, in order to prevent classic elec- solely with start-ups and in 2014 identified a predictive maintenance. Here, sensors iden- tronics suppliers such as Apple, Samsung etc. good 400 customers. tify potential wear and tear and alert opera- from taking away their livelihood and in order tors in good time, before a breakdown, that to secure their place in this future market seg- Sometimes there are no appropriate semi- maintenance and/or a replacement of parts is ment. In these cases, EBV becomes involved conductors for the particular market or the required. EBVs involvement with Industry 4.0 in what is akin to matchmaking by introduc- desired design. One reason for this might be is no longer limited to the purely technologi- ing these new customers to other customers the fact that this market moves or changes cal implementation, but extends to answering who have the expertise to help them with the too quickly; however, it might also be that the questions such as: How do I work with that? implementation of the application. classic semiconductor manufacturers feel that What does it mean? Who are the players? a market or a field of application is not attrac- What are the repercussions?. Consequently, Start-ups also have very clever ideas but often tive. Under its EBVchips programme, EBV the challenge for EBV is to bring the discus- the hardware for these businesses is only a Elektronik is able to create a solution relatively sions with its customers to a higher level and standard product which they need to imple- quickly for applications that were previously to help them to adapt their processes, supple- ment their business idea. Often these busi- not covered. Two of the products which come menting product-related advice with the businesses are primarily distinguished by their under EBVchips are not pure semiconductors ness element. software and services, by the connection to but wireless modules, known as Vesta and the Cloud and/or by the underlying data Maia, for special applications. Vesta and Maia New possibilities are also arising in the areas processing. EBV has already helped various provide developers with a platform that they of home automation and the connected car. start-ups to bring their products to market – can use to bring a software-configurable prod- In a house, for example, most light switches sometimes even by brokering a contact with a uct with Internet connection to the market could be dispensed with if sensors were able potential financial backer or investor or with relatively quickly. While Vesta is a sub-GHz to detect where people were. These sensors an appropriate manufacturing partner. Again, module for IP500 mesh networks, Maia is a also provide valuable input for the efficient EBV can often provide start-ups with vital sub-GHz module which EBV delivers with control of heating. At the same time, German logistical support, such as for the organisa- approved stacks for M-Bus and OMS. car manufacturers are assuming that by the tion of software updates or for the outsourc- year 2020 at least every second new vehicle ing of gateway, server and/or Cloud services. Sensors, which capture the status quo of will be a connected car, i.e. a vehicle with a In Europe too, the IoT provides clever start- various quantities, constitute an important permanent Internet connection. ups with a very good chance of realising their element of the Internet of Things. EBV Elek- ideas– even (but by no means only) in the tronik is fully equipped with its very wide In the medical area the IoT allows new forms areas of wearables, personal healthcare, fit- range of sensors. An intelligent pre-process- of patient monitoring. Appropriate sensors on ness sensors and trackers. In Central Europe ing of the sensor data directly at the sensor the patient’s body and a smartphone in their EBV has a team of seven people which deals permits a significant reduction in the data pocket can continuously monitor certain vital

October 2015 10

Cover Story

parameters in everyday life, without them to create much more value. Of course the EBV pass themselves off as authorised to access the needing to be in hospital or to visit a doctor customers themselves determine their busi- data and tap into them? The level of demand daily. In such applications the IoT not only ness models, but with the right questions EBV for security and identification products is provides for a much higher quality of life but experts are able to trigger interesting discus- currently accelerating massively: while up to also reduces the treatment costs at the same sions about relevant points. about a year ago EBV only received three or time, so that the improvement in the quality four queries per year about ID and security of life is also of interest from the purely finan- Although EBV core business is very clearly solutions, it is currently receiving between15 cial point of view. This type of patient moni- semiconductor distribution, the company has and 20 queries per month. toring system primarily uses BLE and Wi-Fi also been investing in software support for for data transmission. some time. This means one EBV employee is As far as the topic of identification and secu- solely concerned with the investigation and rity is concerned EBV has all the market lead- While EBV provides its customers with the qualification of the software of potential and ers on its product line card, including the necessary technical support in connection existing partners, so EBV is able to involve manufacturers Atmel, Infineon, NXP and ST. with the IoT, the support also extends far qualified third-party suppliers in order to Depending on the application, even a small beyond purely technical aspects. It begins with facilitate the fastest possible implementation crypto-component can have a large effect, information about the possibilities offered by of the customer solution. It has already cer- and sometimes complete security solutions the IoT, continues with technical seminars tified some 20 companies whose software is with key management etc are also required. with specific manufacturers on applications specially tailored to IoT applications. The In this area too EBV works with correspond- and/or vertical markets and extends to consul- spectrum ranges from engineering services ing partners such as the Fraunhofer Institute tancy services which can sometimes even lead and software houses to Cloud partners. for Applied and Integrated Security (Fraun- to a radical review of the business model. For hofer AISEC) in Garching near Munich. EBV example, one of its customers had previously Data security is a sensitive but extremely FAEs are specially trained in security and help developed and manufactured compressors but important topic. EBV increases the aware- developers to recognise the potential dangers now sells compressed air as a service: instead ness of its customers for this topic by asking and work through the corresponding issues. of selling its customers a machine, it now pro- questions like: have your products already Since very few medium-sized companies have vides them with air with a well-defined, per- been copied? During an analysis of compet- the resources to create their own secure server manently available quality and specification. itors, one of our customers discovered that a infrastructure, collaboration with the appropri- Making use of the previously mentioned pre- certain device, albeit with an outwardly dif- ate specialists in the field is an absolute must dictive maintenance in the framework of the ferent appearance, was an exact copy of its in this area in order to ensure the long-term IoT and the resulting reliability, by virtue of own product. How high is the risk that peo- success and the survival of the business. n offering a service, this customer is now able ple will access the data, manipulate them or

October 2015 12 Product News

home2net: secure cloud access icant benefits are obtained when the full offer party network operator SIMs, all managed with a RJ45 micro module is utilized. These services are agnostic and from a single unified connectivity platform. home2net celebrates the world premiere of its available for customers that use a third-party News ID 3397 super-compact micro-module web@ctrl-mm for their connectivity. for secure and easy cloud access. web@ctrl-mm News ID 3288 Arrow to host seminars is a cloud connected I/O controller and com- covering all aspects of IoT plements the web@ctrl family. With physical ADLINK debuts Intelligent IoT Gateway Arrow Electronics announced plans for a dimensions of 42 x 20 x 16 mm only it neatly Starter Kit based on Intel IoT gateway wide-ranging and all-embracing set of sem- fits on almost any kind of OEM Device replac- ADLINK has released its new Intelligent IoT inars on the Internet of Things across Europe. ing an “ordinary” RJ 45 Ethernet connector. Gateway Starter Kit. The IoT Gateway Starter The IoT in Focus tour will encompass locations News ID 3247 Kit combines ADLINK’s MXE-202i intelli- in Germany, France, UK, Sweden, Denmark, gent IoT gateway, based on Intel Atom E3826 Poland, Austria, and Switzerland and cover Telit: Pan-European connetivity processors, ADLINK’s EdgePro IoT device connectivity and embedded applications, sys- solution for IoT & sensor management application, one light tem integration, big data and the cloud Telit announced the introduction of a Pan-Eu- sensor and corresponding siren output, Mod- News ID 3406 ropean coverage with enhanced performance, bus TCP module, and accessories, all utilizing one roaming price for all operators. Features industrial open standard protocol with secu- Mouser: enhanced Internet of include seamless roaming across Europe as rity function powered by Intel® IoT Gateway. Things applications site well as Russia and Turkey; In addition, val- News ID 3366 Mouser Electronics announced the introduc- ue-added services that allow customers to tion of their updated Internet of Things Appli- remotely manage and troubleshoot their Sierra Wireless: IoT platform cations site. Mouser’s updated and enhanced deployment (e.g. roaming steering control combines cloud, hardware, and Applications site brings together the two by the end customer) are offered, thereby managed connectivity services evolving technologies critical for IoT: wireless improving serviceability and transparency to Sierra Wireless announced an integrated ser- connectivity for interconnecting embedded their end customers. vice platform that combines cloud, Internet of systems, and smart sensors. Combined with Things hardware, and managed connectivity recent advances in low power microcontrol- Service bundles include module plus SIM, services to support worldwide deployments. lers, these new “things” are being connected to module plus SIM plus value-added services, The new IoT Acceleration Platform is unique the internet easily and inexpensively, ushering and a bundle that extends connectivity to the in that it provides global multi-operator cov- in a second industrial revolution. Cloud. When new projects are created, signif- erage by combining Sierra Wireless and third- News ID 3243

13 October 2015 Tools & Software The needed impact of the IoT on software engineering By Marc Brown, GrammaTech

The Internet of Things is a paradigm impacting our daily life for good or bad. IoT software needs security by design, therefore it is a business imperative. Manufacturers must evaluate the cyber threats and level of exposure of IoT devices, implementing all necessary design checks and countermeasures against the accelerating set of menaces.

Powered by the forces of the cloud, con- development teams treat security as an after- IoT devices? It starts with a sound plan that nected endpoints, wireless technologies, and thought, running only basic checks, if any, includes next-generation software assurance big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) evolu- during their QA cycle. and a security-first methodology. Teams need tion is forming a perfect storm. This single, to rethink how they deliver software quickly – transformative force is bigger than anything This confluence of drivers – the lack of a with security, safety, and quality in mind from in the history of the tech industry, fuelling an security-first engineering philosophy, the design to deployment. To do this successfully, unparalleled consumer-oriented features race, increased use of third party software, and the teams must leverage new tools that help them expected to advance at an incredible rate over continually growing time-to-market pres- more efficiently analyze the software they the next decade. sures from business executives complacent are developing – including both source and about IoT security – will continue to put us in binary code. And why not? Vendors are racing to claim a an ever-increasing tough spot, ripe for cyber piece of the predicted 8.9-trillion-dollar IoT criminals and nation states looking to exploit New levels of software integrity can only be market by 2020, made up of more than 50 bil- these connected devices and networks. These achieved if teams are able to eliminate both lion IoT devices spanning nearly all markets software vulnerabilities have already put con- accidental coding errors and intentional – automotive, energy/utilities, home appliance, sumer safety and privacy at risk, increasing design-in vulnerabilities, through efficient consumer electronics, medical, education, corporate liabilities, eroding trust, and in analysis techniques suitable for actual highly manufacturing, and more. Although very some cases, shutting down critical public and complex applications. Teams can start by: exciting to the consumer, this race for IoT industry services. mandating the use of source code analy- superiority also brings to light a significant sis across their development teams – during dark side. The fact of the matter is that nowadays smart development, quality assurance, and security devices are anything but smart. One recent auditing, utilizing binary analysis for third- Current manufacturers are still develop- study found that 70% of the top 10 IoT smart party code analysis, and developing with a ing products using old and entrenched sup- devices are vulnerable to exploitation. The security-first philosophy. ply chain, engineering, and QA processes daily onslaught of news reports regarding new that weren’t designed for the complexities of devices, appliances, and systems that have As IoT applications become more feature-rich, highly-connected smart devices nowadays. been hacked includes stories that are quite with additional elements of internet-con- Likewise, engineering teams are utilizing an terrifying, such as hackers remotely taking nectivity and device intelligence, the risks of increasingly diverse set of suppliers and rely- control of an automobile through its wireless built-in security vulnerabilities are increasing. ing on third-party software where possible to hot spot connection and successfully com- Despite this trend, awareness of the risks asso- save developer time, all while trying to satisfy manding brakes and other critical systems. ciated with insecure code is still low among the business and market thirst for these new So how do we evolve manufacturing pro- IoT developers and QA teams, and not a pri- capabilities. Unfortunately, many software cesses to better protect our next-generation ority with most management teams.

October 2015 14

Tools & Software

It is now used throughout software development in all applications, from highly sensitive government applications to security-intensive financial systems to safety-critical applications to consumer and mobile applications.

According to the latest report from VDC Research, the majority of software that runs on embedded devices is now developed by external sources, not in-house development teams. Some of this is open-source, but in embedded applications, nearly 30% of code is third- party commercial software – so the source is often unavailable. Such components include graphics toolkits, cryptography libraries, and communications middleware (network, USB, Bluetooth), which make up nearly 70% of the common embedded attack vendors. Figure 1. CodeSonar static-analysis tool for source and binary have the ability to detect vulnerabilities before products are shipped, dramatically reducing security threats and corporate GrammaTech, leveraging over 10 years of col- exposures laborative research, has developed a binary analysis capability to examine third-party code without requiring access to source code. This capability is fully integrated within our proven static analysis tool, CodeSonar, the first and only commercially-available binary analysis product. CodeSonar binary analysis technology provides developers with the ability to evaluate, check, and inspect third-party code, and provides businesses with more options within their supply chain, enabling them to utilize software from new, innovative companies that might not have an established reputation. When source code is available, you can use CodeSonar in mixed source/binary mode, analyzing your complete application.

The days of developing a standalone application are gone – the Internet of Things has rapidly forced manufacturers to rethink how their products will support today’s connected Figure 2. The precision of CodeSonar taint analysis capabilities has substantially increased, which economy, and changed the threat landscape includes new tainted buffer access and indirect function call checkers forever. Today reality is that there are edu- Modern static analysis tools are popular of dollars. We’ve seen this numerous times cated attackers whose sole function is to break because they have proven to be effective, in the recent news, for example with Toyo- into IoT systems for many reasons, including they are simple to introduce, and they can be ta’s unintended acceleration issue estimated fun, intellectual stimulation, profit, or worse, used by development, QA, and security audit to cost $3 billion in addition to the brand’s offensive attacks and terrorism. teams. Furthermore, in contrast to traditional first black eye; with the potential safety haz- dynamic testing, the code analyzed is never ards arising from the recently-hacked Ucon- Software development teams must nowadays executed, so there is no additional test case nect vulnerability of the Jeep, affecting over adopt a robust secure design lifecycle, giving development overhead and static analysis can 470,000 vehicles; and with the recent hack- them the insights and capability to get it right be applied very early in the development pro- ing of several SCADA systems, most notably first, to prevent these attackers from having a cess. When programmers use static analysis as the Stuxnet exploitation, used to attack and chance at breaking in. A general rule of thumb soon as code is written, bugs and security vul- destroy industrial equipment. for teams to follow involves an end-to-end nerabilities can be found and eliminated even threat assessment ,from a third-party audit before the unit testing or integration testing It’s simply unacceptable for development team, security-optimized designs, and securi- phases begin. The earlier a defect is found, the teams today not to provide the added level ty-scanning tools, of source and binaries. cheaper it is to fix; this cost saving is a major of software assurance needed that is available advantage of automated static analysis. with static analysis tools. CodeSonar can be CodeSonar is ideal for zero-defect tolerance easily deployed for the cost of a developer’s embedded environments because it analyzes Fortunately, static analysis tools for source and morning coffee and scone. both source and binary code to identify seri- binary have the ability to detect vulnerabili- ous security and quality liabilities that cause ties before products are shipped, dramatically Over the last few years, third-party code has system crashes, memory corruption, data reducing security threats and corporate expo- moved from a minor factor in software devel- races, and other unexpected vulnerabilities. sures that cost organizations several millions opment to a dominant force in the industry. CodeSonar 4.1 includes new distributed anal-

October 2015 16 Tools & Software

Figure 3. When source code is available, you can use CodeSonar in mixed source/binary mode, analyzing the complete application. ysis capabilities, deeper tainted data analysis, and Unix simultaneously). This development and binary analysis support for x64 proces- has the potential to speed up the analysis sors. Combined, these advances will help phase in proportion to the number of proces- developers build more stable and secure sors in the analysis pool, and gives develop- code in the IoT era. New technical advances ers the flexibility to turn up the depth of their in CodeSonar 4.1 include: analysis to find more critical defects.

Deeper Tainted Data Analysis – GrammaT- Binary support for x64 – As the only com- ech has substantially increased the preci- mercial static analysis tool with binary code sion of its taint analysis capabilities, which analysis, the 4.1 release extends GrammaT- includes new tainted buffer access and indi- ech position as the binary analysis author- rect function call checkers. Analyzing indi- ity by adding the ability to analyze 64-bit rect function calls more precisely is invaluable Intel microprocessor code. As a result, more in discovering serious security vulnerabilities development teams will have access to such as the recent Heartbleed bug. GrammaTech binary analysis to ensure that their third-party code meets internal secu- New Distributed Analysis – Through ground- rity and quality standards. Analyzing binary breaking research at GrammaTech, funded code alongside source code with CodeSonar by the Department of Homeland Security, has been shown to find 40% more defects CodeSonar now distributes static analysis than when source code alone was analyzed. processing across a large numbers of hetero- (Programs tested were a mix of 75% source geneous machines (such as Linux, Windows, and 25% binary code.) n

Product News

Altia: code generation support SEGGER: compression system for STM32F7 MCUs tailored for embedded devices Altia announces code generation support SEGGER launches emCompress, a com- for the new STMicroelectronics STM32F7 pression tool for embedded systems to Microcontroller. The STM32F7 addresses a reduce the required storage on the target broad range of applications and is the first for boot images, HTML files or other static microcontroller on the market to feature the data. emCompress automatically picks the new ARM Cortex-M7 processor: the latest best algorithm for the memory available. It and highest-performing Cortex-M core for reduces flash memory sizes, costs and data advanced consumer, industrial, medical, transmission time. and Internet-of-Things devices. News ID 3392 News ID 3271

17 OctoberOctober 2015 2015 Tools & Software Digital signatures: fighting firmware hacking and hardware cloning By Dirk Akemann, Segger

In the age of the IoT, firmware attacks are becoming an increasing danger. Digital signatures can protect embedded applications against hacking and prevent the cloning of hardware.

The number of reports about success- as possible, there is always the possibility that or hashes are used to evaluate if data has been ful hacks of different devices increases by someone else would put in the time, money corrupted or lost during transfer. However, the week: from internet-hijacking of cars to and effort to exploit that system,” the direc- these instruments do not indicate anything remotely stopping anaesthetic machines and tor of a US City Electoral Board said, arguing about the sender of the data, i.e. if the software opening allegedly super-secure safes through against decommissioning unsecure voting update is from the original manufacturer of a a simple USB stick, from worms attacking machines. But that is not a convincing argu- product. They do thus not contribute to higher Apple computers to voting machines being ment, because there are in fact solutions for security – in contrast to digital signatures. Only decommissioned because of serious vulnera- protecting the firmware, without significant the latter verify the authenticity of the sender. bilities. These attacks are potentially danger- expense or effort. The digital signature generated by emSecure ous not only for the individual user, but in fact is based on the asymmetric RSA cryptosys- for society. emSecure, developed by Segger Microcontrol- tem. Its algorithms have proven their worth ler, is the first software package for generation for decades. 2,048-bit keys, which are used by During the rapid evolvement of embedded and verification of digital signatures that runs default, are currently regarded as absolutely and interconnected devices, most developers on embedded devices without much effort and, safe and not to be broken by reverse engineer- of hardware or applications have neglected at the same time, is also a complete toolset. It ing. Governmental institutions like the NSA the issue of preparing the firmware for the has been developed specifically for embedded were not involved in the development of RSA, growing danger of third-party attacks. They applications, is easy to implement, and the pro- which means it does not contain a backdoor still do without signing and authorizing firm- cess of signing and verifying is so quick that it as is usually demanded by these institutions. ware updates, or neglect the necessary dili- does not degrade perceived boot time and the However, both DSA and ECDSA signing and gence for the handling of signatures. Lack of user experience. It relies on the concept of dig- verification code is also available from Segger, awareness of this threat makes it even eas- ital signatures with a pair of private and public on request. ier to infect firmware. Once in the system, keys. The manufacturer of a device or applica- intruders remain in the firmware and do not tion couples the public key within the product. emSecure has been designed from scratch get detected by common scanners, which usu- Whenever he provides firmware updates or for best possible portability and performance ally do not operate on this level. Even a rein- other relevant data for the product, these will together with minimum memory require- stallation of the operating system will not help. be signed by help of the private key. The receiv- ments. It can even be used with small sin- Such attacks can ruin devices – or turn them ing product then checks, by help of the public gle-chip microcontrollers, without the need into remotely controlled tools in a more mali- key, whether it can validate the firmware by its for additional external memory or hardware. cious undertaking. Some people seem to sur- signature. If so, the update is authentic and will The keys and signatures can best be generated render in view of this threat. “No matter how be installed. If not, it will be stopped or erased. on a stand-alone PC. It has been tailor-made much time, money and effort we could put This way, non-signed or manipulated firmware for two areas of application: anti-hacking and into a device or a system to make it as secure cannot invade the product. Usually, checksums anti-cloning.

October 2015 18 Tools & Software

name of the company. The passphrase has to for the standard 2k-bit keys take less than be kept separate and secure, just like the pri- 32ms. Static RAM requirement is zero, as ver- vate key. For IoT devices, such anti-hacking ification takes place on the stack. protection is essential. They can be small, but still secure, as emSecure offers higher perfor- emSecure comes as a package with all neces- Figure 1. Generation of a signature for the mance on the back of low resource consump- sary applications for the generation and ver- data to send a hash value. This hash value is tion. As a pure software-based solution, it is ification of digital signatures, including the encrypted by RSA key. The data itself is not also affordable and can easily be integrated source code. This way, the user can keep full encrypted. into existing products, too. control of the code used in his product. The package also contains Sign & Verify, a Win- The second area of application is anti-cloning. dows tool for easy drag-and-drop creation Cloned devices and applications are a grow- of digital signatures and the verification of ing risk, not just for turnover and reputation signed files. Sign & Verify brings security to of the affected manufacturers. They can also any kind of data transmission, be it commer- be dangerous for the user and often have cial or private use. A pair of public and private limited functionality and lifespan. Accord- keys is used to create and verify digital signa- ing to official estimates, one in ten electronic tures. Digital documents can be signed with Figure 2. Firmware update is signed by means devices contain illegal parts, be it copies or the private key. of the private key. illegally recycled ones. With emSecure, protection against cloning can be integrated into Signing data this way is very helpful even in the original device. First a key pair is gener- the private area. Modifications of the data ated at a secure facility. The private key will during transmission – be it through a virus, a be included in the production process of the trojan or any willful manipulation – will no product. At the end of the production process, longer go unnoticed. The utility can also be after the unit is assembled and tested, some used commercially, for example to make sure hardware-specific, fixed, and unique data, like that data stored to and recalled from a server the unique ID of the microcontroller is read is unchanged. The Sign & Verify package con- Figure 3. Verification of signed firmware at from the unit. This data is signed by emSe- tains a key pair for evaluation purposes. For the recipient by mean of the public key. cure with the private key and the signature is private use, a unique key pair is available from written back to the unit into an OTP area or a Segger for free, on request. For commercial In contrast to existing security products that specified location on memory. use, both the key generator and the source only scan for attacks which have already hap- code are available, a license is required. n pened, emSecure seeks to implement security The public key will be included in the firm- during the design process of the product, pre- ware which will run on the product. When cluding such attacks. The aim is to prevent the the firmware is running it will read the unique Product News intrusion of manipulated firmware by third data from the unit and verify it with the sig- parties. For this purpose, the manufacturer nature. When the signature does not match, generates a key pair and couples the public for example when it was simply copied to a Wind River at IOT Solutions key in the bootloader of the product where counterfeit unit with other unique data, the World Congress in Barcelona firmware updates are managed. firmware will refuse to run. This means the Wind River has announced its participation firmware cannot simply be read out and cop- at IOT Solutions World Congress taking Any firmware update is signed with the pri- ied into the cloned hardware. Hackers might place in Barcelona on 16 – 18th Septem- vate key. In order to do so, first a hash value is eventually deactivate the clone check, if pro- ber. Together with parent company Intel, calculated for the firmware by using a secure vided with enough time and budget. However, Wind River will be exhibiting a range of IoT hash algorithm (SHA1). The hash is then the clone will then be uncovered with the first product demonstrations including real-life padded – which prevents common mathe- authentic firmware update, as it again con- implementations within a smart city. matical attacks – and encrypted by RSA. It is tains verification functions and will identify News ID 3430 important to mention that the firmware is not the clone. encrypted. Signature verification can be done Vector Informatik announces in-product or off-product. With in-product Segger uses emSecure for its own products. Technology Days 2015 verification the firmware for example verifies The latest version of its J-Link debug probe On 28 and 29 October 2015, the Vector the digital signature at boot-time and refuses features both anti-hacking and anti-cloning, Technology Days will have their premiere at to run when the signature cannot be veri- while the new IDE Segger Embedded Stu- the Motorworld in Böblingen, Germany. In fied. With off-product verification an external dio uses it for authenticating licenses. emSe- a fittingly automotive ambience with 1000 application, e.g. a PC application communi- cure aims for portability and is designed to m² of floor space, the high-tech company cating with the device, reads the signature and fit speed and size requirements for different will present forward-looking technologies data from the product and verifies it. targets. By default it uses 2048-bit keys, which that you can touch. Vector is opening up its are considered unbreakable in the near fore- development labs and will demonstrate the The necessary key pair can be generated in seeable future and can be created from prov- latest product developments. The exhibition two different ways, either by random seed able primes. The process of verifying data is will be flanked by a forum featuring short or by help of a passphrase. The latter has the technically split up into two steps, hash com- talks on current development topics, work- advantage that keys can be regenerated. This putation and signature decryption and com- shops on all aspects of Vector’s core compe- allows to not store the private key, but gen- parison of hash values. Performance tests on tency, and basic seminars. erate it only when it is needed. However, the an STM32 Cortex-M4 microcontroller, run- News ID 3385 passphrase should not be too obvious, like the ning at 200MHz, have shown that verification

19 October 2015 Embedded Computing Robust IoT – safety begins with hardware By Angela Bieber, MEN

While the project described in this article called for a very specific housing to suit the customer needs, many mobile IoT applications can already be achieved using standard systems. Networking of the embedded world is thus within reach – even if the environmental conditions Figure 1. Heat management 4.0: become somewhat harder. CompactPCI standard cards are equipped with a solid conduction-cooled frame before being mounted in conduction-cooled housing. The image shows MEN standard components.

Despite the best efforts of internet giant plays a crucial role in mobile markets – and on open hardware standards. After all, while Google, the goal of predicting a flu epidemic indeed in all IoT applications – is data secu- it is not yet clear where things are headed with has yet to be achieved – but we have reached rity. While the main focus from a software the present assortment of competing com- the point where the Internet of Things in con- point of view is on securing the transmis- munication standards, widely used hardware junction with Big Data is now unstoppable. sion of data and the cloud, the hardware used standards will continue to support commu- Forecasts indicate that there will be more than must first provide the necessary conditions to nication between individual systems in the 30 billion networked devices in the world by ensure secure communication and protection future. One prime example of a successful the year 2020. This means we will also be see- against external attacks. IoT system that also functions reliably under ing a huge increase in the number of IoT-en- even the most adverse conditions is currently abled embedded systems, especially under This is achieved by various means, includ- in use on oil platforms. Installed directly on the banner of Industry 4.0. Supported by ing the use of a TPM-enabled (Trust Plat- the drilling sites, the server platform commu- Fieldbus and Ethernet technologies or wire- form Management) chip, which facilitates nicates with the operator data processing cen- less communications, networked devices like encrypted data storage and secure booting. ter in real time from here via GSM, relaying these ensure the “smart” use and interopera- One of the advantages of encrypted data stor- all the data relating to the position of the drill bility between different systems in industrial age, for example in entertainment applications head, resistance in the drilling mud, as well as automation, energy generation and medical in trains and buses, is that it offers a reliable general function and error analyses. technology. way for exclusive film material to be played solely on the operator screens. Secure booting An extreme installation like this calls for Reliable IoT systems for demanding mobile ensures that the system can only be booted maximum performance where the mechan- applications such as train-to-land communi- after its integrity has been checked and there ical specifications are concerned – indeed, cation are, however, very different to the net- have been no changes to the flash. This pro- the powerful computer with 200W of waste work components used in industrial settings. tects the system against unauthorized access. heat would be enough of a challenge for Secure data transmission and the networking A password-protected BIOS offers additional any system. The solution therefore had to of individual components are not the only anti-tampering protection, as does the secu- be just as extreme as the demanding situa- factors at play here. Devices used in these rity provided by whitelisting, i.e. blocking tion itself: to begin with, the CompactPCI situations must be designed to cope with an unauthorized applications. standard components were equipped with a extended temperature range; they must also solid conduction-cooled aluminum frame. be resistant to shock, vibration and dampness, Along with the myriad of measures taken to The components, in turn, are encased in an and ensure the connection remains stable and ensure secure and robust IoT hardware com- IP64-protected housing, also with thermally reliable throughout the journey or flight, etc. ponents, there is yet another factor to be conductive properties. This alone would be In addition to the ability to withstand extreme taken into account during the development enough to have the system fully up and run- environmental conditions, another issue that stage: the use of flexible architectures based ning and protected against the rough sea. But

October 2015 20

Embedded Computing

Figure 2. Robust network components: the wireless access point or gateway in the form of a conduction-cooled Box PC, and the modular storage system as a ½ 19” system. Both offer the option for flexible adaptation on a built-to-order basis.

to ensure sufficient heat dissipation another ponents are also monitored by a system con- housing also surrounds the splash-proof pro- troller, which is used to read and analyze cessor unit. High-performance IP52-rated diagnostics data from the BIOS upon booting. fans in the space between the construction If a defect is detected in one of the CPU com- provide continuous air circulation, expelling ponents, this information is conveyed to the the heat outwards. Although the decision to data processing center during start-up. The use vulnerable fans contradicts the idea of an transmission of data from the server plat- almost maintenance-free system, the risks forms to the drilling sites and onward to the were outweighed by the advantages of main- data processing center is encrypted by secu- taining a compact construction without the rity protocols and corresponds to an end-to- need to compromise on processing power. end encryption. This makes the transmission What’s more, the need for maintenance is path of the data negligible; in any case, the reduced to a minimum because the electron- information can only be read with the corre- ics are left untouched inside the second box. sponding recipient key from the data processing center. In order to ensure reliable operation and prevent the possibility of an expensive fail- CompactPCI and a combination of Compact- ure of the electronics, the developers looked PCI-Plus IO and CompactPCI Serial served to redundant architectures and monitoring as the perfect starting point from which to components. To this end, they installed two implement this IoT system given their sta- redundant power supply units (PSUs) that can tus as tried-and-tested and widely-used stan- assume the tasks normally performed by the dards. The sophisticated design of the housing defective power supply unit if a failure should and the security measures made this funda- occur. During normal operation, however, mentally robust 19” technology suitable even the output is divided between the two PSUs, for high processing performance in offshore and this in turn helps to increase their work- applications – and these possibilities can, of ing life. Given the strong fluctuations in the course, also be applied to any other mobile voltage of the power supplied by generators transportation market. on the drilling sites, additional input voltage monitoring combined with a high-speed DA While the project described called for a converter was necessary in order to verify the very specific housing to suit the customer quality of the voltage. This information can needs, many IoT applications can already be also be transmitted via remote diagnostics achieved using standard systems. MEN relies (made possible thanks to Intel AMT technol- upon scalable, pre-configured network com- ogy), allowing generators with a harmful volt- ponents in the form of a ½ 19” system or a box age to be switched off from the control center. PC to this end. Both of these forms offer the Should a power failure occur in spite of these option for flexible configuration on a built- measures, a back-up battery will keep the sys- to-order basis. And of course, they have also tem running for a maximum of 20 minutes been prepared with mobile markets in mind: – just enough time to trigger and send the cor- they meet the EN 50155 requirements govern- responding error message and shut down the ing rail and e-mark labelling for automotive system correctly. applications, they function in the extended temperature range and they use fixed soldered The three CompactPCI PlusIO CPU com- components only. n

October 2015 22 Embedded Computing

Product News

congatec adds new AMD G-Series TFT LCD with 250nits brightness. The fanless munication as well as factory automation and motherboards to Mini ITX portfolio design and waterproof enclosure (IP65-rated control systems, the EMUC-B201 peripheral congatec announces the expansion of its front panel) makes it highly reliable and can enables embedded systems for the Internet of industrial-grade Mini-ITX motherboard avoid damage from spillage. Vehicles and Industrial PCs for Industry 4.0. portfolio with two highly efficient low-power News ID 3437 News ID 3292 conga-IGX variants that are based on the Gen 2 AMD Embedded G-Series SoC processor Innodisk: ruggedized mPCIe CAN bus Acceed: extra flat Box PCs for and feature powerful SoC integrated AMD adapter for Industrial and Embedded space-critical applications Radeon graphics. Innodisk introduces a new embedded periph- The professional Box PCs Nuvo-3005LP and News ID 3283 eral module that extends embedded systems Nuvo-3003LPare low-profile versions of the and industrial PCs with CANBus capability proven Nuvo-3000 IPC series from Acceed. MSC integrates low-power 6th gen Intel for the Internet of Things. The EMUC-B201 These controllers’ extra flat chassis was con- Core processors on COM Express modules is a ruggedized mPCIe embedded periph- structed specially for use in tight installation MSC Technologies presents the MSC C6C- eral module that provides dual channel CAN surroundings. Despite their low height of a SLU Type 6 COM Express module family, Bus 2.0A/B functionality to an embedded or mere 69mm, these fanless industrial PCs can be which is based on the latest 6th Generation industrial computer. With CANBus widely used at ambient temperatures of -25 to +70°C. Intel Core processors. Intel’s U processor plat- used in vehicle sensor and subsystem com- News ID 3290 form integrates the low-power processor with graphics controller and the complete chipset in one multi-chip package. The new processor line is perfectly suited to fill the performance gap between existing Intel Atom and high- end Intel Core two-chip solutions. News ID 3410

Vecow: quad core Intel Core i7 in-vehicle fanless Embedded system Vecow launches her latest vehicle computing elite, IVH-7700 ICY Series In-Vehicle Fanless Embedded System. Integrated with excellent mobile availability, higher storage capacity, versatile I/O connections, wide range power input, secure power protection and rugged reliability, Vecow IVH-7700 Series Fanless In-Vehicle System is your trusted solution for real-time performance driven In-Vehicle Surveillance, Traffic Safety System, Intelligent Transportation System, Mobile NVR, Intel- ligent Surveillance and Fleet Management applications. News ID 3412

AAEON: panel PC features 10.1 inch projected capacitive multi-touch screen AAEON announces its latest member of the ACP panel series family, the ACP-1104. This new panel PC features the ever-popular 10.1” projected capacitive multi-touch screen with 7H scratchproof glass for added protection. Its ultra-slim profile is much sought after for ease of mounting onto walls or other vertical surfaces. News ID 3358

Axiomtek: multi-touch 21.5” fanless PCAP Full HD Panel PCT Axiomtek has launched GOT3217W-881-PCT, its new fanless multi-touch panel computer featuring the new Intel Core i7/i5/i3, Pentium and Celeron processors. The GOT3217W- 881-PCT is equipped with a 21.5” Full HD

23 October 2015 Embedded Computing New premium processor performance for x86 low-power designs By Gerhard Gilch, congatec

The new Intel Pentium and Celeron SoC processors (codenamed Braswell) are impressive with their massive plus in graphics and more balanced overall performance. But why is this high level performance necessary on a 4-watt Scenario Design Power and what makes these new top-class low-power systems so special?

Figure 1. The conga-QA4 module is offered with three different processor variants to provide good scalability.

At present, the way we develop low-power Previous x86 processor generations with com- The new embedded Intel Pentium and Celeron systems is changing rapidly. On the one hand, paratively few watts didn’t fit the bill in graph- processors are all based on the new Airmont parts of the distributed intelligence are drift- ics as well as general processing performance, microarchitecture, the 14nm variant of Intel ing off into the central cloud, resulting in for example, in parallel virus scanning. Over Silvermont microarchitecture, for which pro- leaner on-site systems. On the other hand, the past years, however, this gap has been cessors were launched under the name of Pen- these systems require an industry-grade con- closing up progressively and with the avail- tium, Celeron and Atom (all codenamed Bay nection to the Internet of Things (IoT). And ability of the new Intel processor generation Trail). The Pentium name, however, has just a very secure one at that. The corresponding a new milestone has been set in the premium reappeared on the new Intel embedded road- performance of the systems and the connec- class of low-power processors. The launch of map with the new microarchitecture. With the tion is a prequisite for this. Inevitably, the these processors also coincides with a mul- availability of the new microarchitecture, the demands placed on IoT-connected systems titude of necessary design decisions in the embedded processor range will therefore be will further increase, e.g. for interaction with fast-moving environment of new IoT-driven extended in the premium class of the low-power other systems in the field. The platform tech- applications. Possibly this launch will affect segment. This underlines the special milestone nology therefore needs to be extremely flex- the embedded industry as significantly as the in the performance per watt advancement in ibly scalable. In the majority of applications launch of Intel Pentium M technology about low-power processor technology. graphics performance is essential, more and twelve years ago or the first Intel Atom pro- more multiple high resolution screens are cessor launch roughly seven years ago, which The subcategories of the microarchitectures being deployed, for example in kiosk and sparked off the new SFF (small form factor) in the Pentium, Celeron and Atom perfor- retail systems, in slot machines and digital sig- trend of x86 processors. In this case however, mance ranges – and some further differen- nage installations, in factories and in SCADA it will more likely be the market which will tiation characteristics like ECC support and systems or in countless HMIs in all sorts of dictate the course. extended temperature range for Bay Trail- equipment, machinery and plants. based Intel Atom processors – make perfect No matter whether the new Intel Pentium and sense by the way. For customer applications, All these demands have to be catered for with Celeron processor technology does spark off a the performance and power consumption of as few watts as possible in the low single digit new era or not: it is one of the important build- a processor series are primary factors. Just area to enable fanless, robust and space-saving ing blocks for the IoT of intelligent embedded by naming the processor series, OEMs are embedded designs. Today, we need a new, more devices and it’s worth looking at the techni- thus in a position to classify their customers’ powerful performance class below the Intel cal details of the new processor even without expectations on board performance. Develop- Core i processor line but also one that is more the IoT connection, since it offers an overall ers, on the other hand, profit from a uniform balanced overall and widely scalable to allow the improved performance with lower power con- microarchitecture by a simplified code devel- development of entirely fitting, GUI-supporting sumption and has become much more power- opment for their applications. They only need edge systems for the Internet of Things. ful in terms of graphics. to optimize their code for a single architec-

October 2015 24 Embedded Computing

ture and can then nevertheless cover all the requirements in the low- power segment from entry-level to premium-class models.

With this performance increase the new embedded Intel Celeron and Pentium processors are also filling the performance gap towards Intel Core i processors, as shown in table 1. The table compares the average scores of the popular processor board benchmark Geekbench with the new Braswell, Intel Core and important Bay Trail processors. Particularly impressive are the peak values which the new Braswell processors achieve in the multicore score per TDP (Thermal Design Power). The TDP which has been reduced to 6 watts and 4 watts SDP (Scenario Design Power) for typical applications of the new Intel Pentium class smoothly paves the way for developing fanless systems even for low-power systems requiring highest performance.

Even in the increasingly critical area of graphics, the new generation of processors seamlessly connects to the latest Intel Core processors which, compared to the very good predecessor generation, has once more developed impressively. In fact it has been doubled. Users and developers can now also benefit from this performance range of high-resolution GUIs in 4K or even from high quality, latency-free 3D animations. Especially in touchscreen operation, delay-free 3D graphics are a must for user experience and increased operating safety.

Like the Intel Core processors, the new processor generation supports three independent displays, which can be connected on the SoC side via HDMI 1.4b, DP 1.1a and eDP 1.4. Plus, for the first time, the new Intel Celeron and Pentium processors support ultra-high 4K displays (3840 x 2160 pixels). This is relevant for sophisticated digital signage applications operating large format displays with diagonals of several meters or POS/POI and gaming applications where the viewer is situated in close proximity to the monitor and can recognize even the smallest of details.

The double performance was achieved by switching to the energy-efficient Intel Gen 8 graphics, also used in the 5th generation of Intel Core processors. In order to limit the power consumption, the Intel Celeron N3150 and N3050 processors were, however, limited to 12 EUs (Exe- cution Units) and the Pentium N3700 to 16 EUs, resulting in seamless scalability to the Intel Core class. Needless to say, the new Pentium and Celeron processors also support latest graphics APIs like DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.2 and OpenGL ES 3.0/3.0+. Thanks to OpenCL 1.2 support, the new processors can outsource computing-intense parallel tasks - which to date have been carried out on the CPU - to the GPU. This is important, for example, in medical technology imaging or face recognition in video surveillance systems. To achieve this, each EU of the GPU integrates two SIMDs (Single Instruction Multiple Data) floating point units, which can each carry out up to eight 16-bit or four 32-bit integer or floating point operations (FLOP). The 16-bit half-float support is new too. It enables any FPU to carry out simultaneous additions and multiplications (MAD). With 16 EUs, the result is the impressive figure of up to 512 FLOPs per clock cycle (16 EUs* 2 SIMD-FPUs * 8 FLOPs * 2 MAD = 512 FLOPs) and with that a the- oretical peak performance of 358.4 GFlops per second, assuming the execution units are running in burst mode (700 MHz).

Intel has upgraded the integrated video engine responsible for the hardware-based real time de- and encoding of high-definition video material. A new feature is the support of H.265/HEVC compressed video. Compared to its predecessor H.264/AVC, H.265 saves a massive 50 percent of the data rate, so that users can now also play 4K videos – a feature previously reserved for specialized or more powerful processors. The encoder section supports H.264, MVC and JPEG. This is particularly relevant for the MIPI-CSI2 interface integrated in the processor. This allows the connection of two HD

25 October 2015 Embedded Computing

Figure 3. Coming soon: the congatec IoT Star- terkit for Braswell processors which simplifies entry into IoT applications.

tions are available which are familiar from the Intel Atom processors of the Bay Trail generation, such as PCIe Gen2 interfaces for individual extensions or security features like the Intel AES-NI Encryption Instruction Set or Secure Boot. Figure 2. Intel Braswell SoC block diagram congatec has made the new high-end class in the low-power area available on the Qseven Average Geekbench Scores modules conga-QA4 that will initially support Freq. Single-‐Core Multi-‐Core TDP Burst Processor Cores SCS/TDP MCS/TDP Cache [MHz] Score (SCS) Score (MCS) [W] Freq three of these new processor variants (Pen- Intel Core i5-‐ tium N3700 and Celeron N3150 and N3050). 1800 2 2482 165 4881 325 15 2,90 3 5350U They are designed to conform to SGET Spec. Intel Core i3-‐ 2 Addendum and, among other things, will 2100 2 1994 133 4108 274 15 2,10 3 5010U consequently include the MIPI-CSI2 inter- Intel Pentium N3700 1600 4 961 160 3243 541 6 2,40 2 face. According to performance requirements, (Braswell) these modules are equipped with up to 8GB Intel Celeron 2000 4 926 93 2863 286 10 2,42 2 of onboard RAM and up to 64GB of eMMC J1900 (Bay Trail) flash. Industry-grade extensions such as I²C Intel Celeron 1600 4 842 140 2629 438 6 2,08 2 Bus (400 kHz Fast Mode, Multi-Master), SPI N3150(Braswell) Intel Atom or Power Loss Control have also been imple- 1900 4 804 80 2617 262 10 1,91 2 E3845 (Bay Trail) mented. Other features which are integrated Intel Celeron via the embedded controller board such as N2930 (Bay 1800 4 819 109 2566 342 7,5 2,16 2 Multi-Stage Watchdog, non-volatile storage Trail) Intel Celeron of user data, unique manufacturing and board 1600 2 884 147 1672 279 6 2,16 2 N3050(Braswell) information, readable board statistics, data Intel Atom 1750 2 782 98 1402 175 8 1,75 1 backup functions or customer-specific data E3827 (Bay Trail) are not only available for onboard use. Poten- Source : http://www.primatelabs.com/geekbench/ tially, they also provide an important basis for big data in innovative IoT apps to, for example,

Table 1. The Intel Pentium N3700 processor achieves absolute peak values in the multicore optimize maintenance management. How this score per TDP and takes on a leading role in high-end low-power processors. data could be provided in a standardized way and how an IoT connection should look seen cameras with 1080p at 30Hz. Photos with res- video data. Application areas can be found in from the perspective of embedded computer olutions of up to 5 megapixels are supported. video surveillance and access control in build- technology is currently being worked on in The main advantages of the integrated MIPI- ing, or include quality management systems the very active SGET (Standardization Group CSI2 interface are the extremely low costs in manufacturing right up to vision-based for Embedded Technologies e.V.) after the and space-saving integration in comparison control of autonomous vehicles. V2.0 Carrier Board Design Guide for Qseven to USB cameras, as both image signal pro- was completed at the beginning of the year. cessors as well as sensor and camera control The I/Os integrated in the processors experi- functions are integrated directly into the pro- enced some small but effective improvements. These specifications are a crucial basis for fur- cessor graphics. The availability of this simple For instance, now even more native support ther developments in embedded computer camera technology opens up completely new for USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports is available. Further technology and the reason why congatec has scenarios for a host of applications. The main to this, up to two SATA data storage units with opted for the SGET Standard Qseven for its application areas could be not only webcam up to 6.0 Gbps can be connected up to twice first implementation. Even more significant, and video telephony functions but also intel- as fast (SATA Revision 3.1). Fast DDR3L 1600 however, was the form factor itself with its ligent vision systems that thanks to the two modules are also now used for the memory. In dimensions of 70x70mm which was devel- cameras could even provide 3D image and addition to these new features, further func- oped especially for the low-power segment

October 2015 26 Embedded Computing

and has a much flatter build than, for exam- the Intel Gateway Solutions for the Internet ple, alternative COM Express modules, which of Things, which makes the IoT connection congatec will, however, in future also make of these embedded boards much easier for available in the new performance class. the customers. The launch enables quick and simple adaptation of all existing Qseven appli- Moving forward it is planned to incorporate cations and evaluation carrier boards to the the processor technology into the new indus- latest processor technology, accelerating the trial-grade Thin Mini-ITX, so that boards to deployment of new product variants. Inciden- match any design task can be provided with tally, the kit stands out not just with its inte- personal integration support. If the standard grated gateway functions but also due to its portfolio does not cover the requirements, tamper-resistant, hardware-based encryption individual variants or full custom designs are technology. The aim is to simplify integration available within congatec Embedded Design of the new processor generation for develop- & Manufacturing Services (EDMS). All stan- ers – even in the highly complex and sensitive dard boards and modules are qualified for security IoT environment. n

Product News

Rutronik: low power fanless COM with low power consumption, lower thermal Express mini module from Advantech characteristics, and rich I/O. The introduction Advantech’s new low power, fanless COM of the Haswell architecture signals further Express Mini Module SOM-7568 is equipped advancements and capabilities from predeces- with the latest Intel Pentium N3700, Cele- sors; lower power consumption, greater num- ron N3150 and Celeron N3000 single-chip bers of USB 3.0 and SATA III channels and processors, which are manufactured on new iAMT revision 9. Intel14-nm process technology. The mini News ID 3263 module is ideal for lower power handheld applications. It is available at distributor MEN: CompactPCI Serial Rutronik as of now. Revision 2 is here News ID 3289 As recently announced by the American con- sortium for embedded technology PICMG, WynMax: Mini-ITX industrial there is an update of the industry standard motherboard supports dual CompactPCI Serial available – CompactPCI Intel Gigabit Ethernet Serial Revision 2. The by now four years old Recognizing IPC market needs, WynMax has successor of the well-known CompactPCI developed a new Mini-ITX industrial mother- standard has in the meantime several tens of board WMIX-A77E0 which is equipped with thousands installations in the field. 2nd Gen. AMD embedded R-series APU pro- News ID 3248 cessors. This system-on-chip supports system memory DDR3 2133/1866/1600MHz SDRM Pentair: new revision removes maximum up to 16GB. WMIX-A77E0 pro- last limitations of CompactPCI vides rich I/O interfaces include 4 HDMI, 3 Serial specification COM, 4 USB 3.0 and 8 USB 2.0. Pentair announced its enhanced features and News ID 3285 functions for its Schroff CompactPCI Serial systems, to reflect the changes of the new congatec: Qseven module with quad-core CompactPCI Serial specification published Pentium processor with 4K resolution by PICMG in 2014. This updated revision congatec introduces the latest addition to includes improvements and new features its Qseven family. The conga-QA4 module which require changes to the chassis. features the new Intel Pentium and Celeron News ID 3249 processors based on 14 nm technology and offers increased energy savings and comput- acceed: IPC power package ing power. The optimized Intel Gen8 graphics, for high data throughput with up to 16 graphics execution units and 4K Despite its compact construction, the Nuvo- (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution, result in a sig- 4000 is a reliable, highly efficient and above nificantly improved visual experience. all flexible controller for factory automa- News ID 3250 tion, in-line production control or demanding tasks in machine vision applications and Amplicon: 4th gen Ventrix and further data processing systems. The power Impact-R rackmount industrial PCs package’s engine is optionally an Intel-CPU Amplicon introduce the amazing power of i7-3610QE or the smaller i5-3610ME variant. the Intel Core 4th generation processor fam- News ID 3236 ily, unleashing incredible processing power

27 October 2015 Embedded Computing Identifying challenges in future 100G backplane designs By Sergej Dizel, Pentair

The telecom and datacom markets are the most data-hungry industries. This article explains the new PICMG 100G-ATCA specification which is not yet complete, but will enable future 100 Gbps data rates on backplanes.

Since the introduction of AdvancedTCA, 100Gbps data rates create many new chal- impedance of the traces and a lower cross-talk which was specified in 2002, the race for more lenges for backplane design. The graphs in fig- between connector vias. data transfer speed on the backplane has been ure 1 and figure 1.1 show the thresholds for on. The telecom and datacom markets have insertion and return loss of the IEEE802.3ap Figure 3 shows the simulation of insertion a hunger for processing power that is never specification which defined 40G Ethernet loss (Sdd21) of a 30mm long differential satisfied. Today processor technologies with and the new standard IEEE802.3bj, which pair in an AdvancedTCA backplane PCB Multicores, GPGPUs and powerful co-proces- defines 100G. At 100G, the IEEE defined without connectors assembled. The differ- sors can satisfy the demands of full HD video two coding methods, 100GBASE-KR4 and ence between the current configuration with on demand, increasing data-hungry services 100GBASE-KP4. The thresholds of both 0.6mm through hole and a reduced through for smart phones and other services. methods are shown in the graphs. As shown, hole size of 0.36mm is obvious. A reduction of the thresholds for both new methods of 100G the distance of the press fit pins within the dif- In addition to the processing power needed for are defined for much higher frequencies. This ferential pair from 1.5 to 1mm is able to fur- those applications, infrastructure must sup- means for the backplane that all components ther reduce the losses of the transmission line. port this huge amount of data traffic as well. such as connectors, the bare board and the Coming from packet switching backplanes copper trace structures have to be designed The next important part of the backplane to with 1Gbps of data transfer in the beginning for those high frequencies. address is the trace structure, especially their of this millennium, today AdvancedTCA back- dimensioning with regard to losses and cross planes support 40Gbps of data transfer. This The ZD and ZD+ connectors as defined in talk. Not every differential pair has similar is achieved by four ports each having a trans- the AdvancedTCA specification has not been properties. For example, when comparing two mit and receive differential pairs transferring for those data rates. A few connector vendors differential stripline pairs with each having 10Gbps each. The four ports together are capa- have been working on a solution. The chal- 100 ohm impedance but different trace widths ble of transferring 40Gbps. Even this is not suf- lenge for the new 100Gbps AdvancedTCA (and thus different layer stackup), they will ficient to feed applications today. Nowadays connector was to achieve a much more homo- have different behavior with regard to trans- Dual Star backplanes are often used where geneous impedance transition between board mission line losses and cross-talk (emission two switches work in parallel to increase the and backplane and keep the crosstalk as low and immission). At 40G backplane data trans- data traffic between transmitter and receiver as possible. Among other improvements this fer this issue is solved, but there are new chal- to 80Gbps. This is certainly not the end point was achieved by decreasing the size of the lenges with 100G. This became visible when of demand for data speed. The IEEE specifi- through holes in the backplane. This method conducting the first simulations for 100G cation for 100Gbps Ethernet over copper was creates another advantage for the backplane data transfer. The impedance discontinuities released at the end of 2014. Today, the PICMG routing as the smaller holes sizes create a between connector and the differential pair working group is defining 100G Ethernet for larger routing channel in between the connec- need to be evaluated very carefully. This part AdvancedTCA based on the IEEE spec. tor pins. This leads to a more homogeneous of the transmission line already plays a signif-

October 2015 28 Embedded Computing

Figure 1 and 1.1. These graphs compare the thresholds for insertion loss (1A) and return loss (1B) at 40G and both methods of 100G.

Figure 2. Comparison of insertion loss of a 30mm differential pair with 6mm and 3.6mm vias.

Figure 3. An example of vias and traces in a backplane icant role in a 40G backplane with 100G this during manufacture will influence the signal part will be much more critical. The imped- properties and, in the worst case, not allow a ance discontinuities between the connector 100G data transfer. This means it is essential and the backplane have a significant influence to very carefully choose a PCB manufacturing on the properties of the whole transmission partner who understands these needs and has channel (losses and cross-talk). If the discon- their processes carefully controlled. A close tinuities are too large, the signal fed into the partnership is needed to qualify those suppli- transmission line is more sensitive to cross- ers and qualify the production technology and talk from adjacent differential signal traces. processes. When the losses and/or influence from cross- talk are too great, the receiver cannot correctly The IEEE802.3bj 100G specification defines read the signal. With that, the bit error rate parameter for the whole Ethernet chan- gets increased. nel, which is located between both transceiver chips. The transmission line of an To achieve the desired trace structure in a bare ATCA-backplane is just a part of the whole board, new requirements for the quality of the transmission channel; both ATCA-boards are bare board are needed. Bare board material, located before and after the backplane within prepreg and core types, backdrilling, drilling the transmission channel. For that reason the offset, etching and many other factors will play IEEE802.3bj parameter can’t be used one-to- an enormous role in 100G backplane design. one for backplane validation. The IEEE802.3bj parameter limits must be separated between In addition to correctly defining those param- these three channel parts (both ATCA boards eters, the quality and the tolerances of the bare and backplane). The PICMG 100G working board manufacturing process are essential to group is working on that, and companies like guarantee a reproducible result of 100G data Pentair are playing an active role defining this transfer. Even the smallest process deviation new important standard. n

29 October 2015 Microcontrollers Security considerations for embedded designs in the new connected world By Gordon Cooper, NXP

As more embedded devices are connected to the internet, becoming part of the Internet of Things, more opportunities come for hackers with malicious intentions. Security is required to protect against their attempts to copy IP, steal data, or hijack a system. But it is hard to know just how much security is needed when designing a system using an embedded microcontroller.

To simplify the security discussion, it helps travels from device A to location B. Symmetric breached. The columns in figure 2 represent to consider security as three elements. In fig- encryption uses the same key for encryption different levels of security that can be consid- ure 1, an embedded device A needs to com- and decryption. It is faster than asymmetric ered in an embedded design. The first column municate with a remote location B. The three encryption which is why asymmetric encryp- represents a typical embedded application. If components of security to consider are 1) tion isn’t used for all communication. The cur- the embedded device is not connected to the device integrity – securing access to device rent encryption standard isAES or Advanced internet – not part of a network – there’s no A, 2) establishing trust with remote location Encryption Standard, a symmetric key block need to worry about encryption algorithms, B through authentication and 3) secure mes- cipher that encrypts data in blocks of 128, 192 establishing trust or key storage. There may saging between the two devices using data or 256 bits using a key of the same length. still be a reason to pay attention to device encryption after trust is established. integrity – particular if intellectual prop- While any algorithm is hackable given enough erty (IP) protection is important. Preventing Device integrity relates to how well the code time, it’s estimated that a brute force attack – competitors from reading out the program (or IP) and data on an embedded device are trying every combination (2128 or 3.4 x 1038) contents of internal flash protects a company protected from unauthorized access such as to uncover the key – against an AES-128 block intellectual property from potential copycats. a remote software hack, someone gaining cypher could take millions of years using mod- For this protection, look for microcontrollers access through established user interfaces or ern supercomputers. AES-256 would require that include built-in code read protection. physical/probing attacks on the system hard- 2256 or 1.1 x 1077 combinations. Since either ware. There are various ways to protect against AES-128 or AES-256 is suitably secure against When IoT connectivity is required, it is time these attacks – requiring varying levels of cost a brute force attack, the AES-128 is often a to consider additional security features for and complexity. Establishing trust between better choice as it is 40% faster to implement. code and data protection. Adding software devices involves one or both devices verify- Since there is little benefit to a brute force security algorithms to a general purpose ing the authenticity of the other, to ensure attack against AES, hackers spend their time microcontroller can provide all the require- data is not being sent to or from an imper- trying to extract the AES keys. If the AES ments needed for securing messaging. Soft- sonator. The typical way of establishing trust keys are not well protected, it doesn’t matter ware RSA or ECC can be used to establish is by asymmetric key encryption – where a how secure the algorithm is. It would be like trust and a software version of AES can be pair of keys (one private and one public) is having a six-inch thick steel door protecting used for secure messaging. Keys are stored in used for establishing trust. The private key your house and then leaving the keys under either flash or RAM and are often scrambled is used for encryption and the public key is the doormat. Security is not a one-size-fits-all using software techniques. Software AES algo- used for decryption. Common algorithms for requirement. How much security is required rithm is no more or less secure than hardware asymmetric key encryption are RSA and ECC. in an embedded design depends on what you accelerated AES implementation. Figure 2 Once trust is established, a symmetric encryp- are connecting to, what you are protecting also highlights the benefit of replacing a gen- tion algorithm is used to protect the data as it and how much damage is done if security is eral purpose microcontroller running soft-

October 2015 30 Microcontrollers

Figure 1. Security thought model

Figure 2. Spectrum of security ware algorithms with one that includes hardware security features like hardware accelerated AES encryption, a true random number generator and improved AES key storage.

The primary advantage of a hardware-accelerated AES block over a software implementation is that hardware-accelerated AES is as much as eight times faster than a software version. Two additional advantages are power savings – a hardware AES takes fewer MCU computations and therefore less power – and a smaller program code size footprint. The same software AES encryption algorithms can run more efficiently if they take advantage of the hardware-accelerated AES built into a microcontroller. A true random number generator (RNG) provides an improvement over a software implementation for the creation of truly random keys. A true RNG uses physical phe- nomenon – like noise – to create random numbers while software implementations have to rely on an algorithm to create a random number. A true RNG is less predictable than a software implementation providing more security. An additional security feature found in some microcontrollers is the ability to store AES keys in memory locations only readable from the hardware IP blocks. This way the keys are no longer exposed to a software extraction.

Microcontrollers with additional security features combined with software encryption algorithms can provide an excellent solution when the embedded device is not physically accessible to hackers. An example would be a thermostat in your house. You might worry about somebody remotely accessing it to gain access to your internal network. But you’re probably not worried about someone breaking into your house to probe the microcontroller in your thermostat to extract the AES keys out of it. If you have someone breaking into your house, you have bigger problems than losing your AES keys. On the other hand, if you have a smart meter outside your house, this might be a more attractive target for hackers who want to physically attack and steal the keys. Since the revenue stream for the electric company

31 October 2015 Microcontrollers

application requiring extensive connectivity and microcontroller performance. This could include industrial controls, industrial automation or diagnostic applications, smart home products including thermostats and access control, automotive aftermarket, and consumer products like musical instruments, printers and other internet connected accessories. Another application is a secure IoT gateway. Here, the microcontroller provides high-speed encrypted connectivity with hardware-accelerated AES via Ethernet or SPI to WiFi. Cypherbridge Systems, an NXP software partner, provides an IoT and cloud-connected software development kits for the LPC18Sxx and LPC43Sxx that take advantage of the AES hardware acceleration.

To add banking grade security, an NXP A7-series secure element can be connected to the microcontroller via an I2C interface. The A7 secure element will handle hardware-accelerated authentication and provide secure storage for persistent certificates for cloud storage. Two evaluation boards that include the LPC18S37 or the LPC43S37 microcontroller and an A70CM secure element are available from distributors. ESL Smart Solutions has created EMap, a secure IoT Gateway, using the LPC18S57 microcontroller and Cypherbridge Systems software security libraries. EMap is a highly secure Internet of Things (IoT) gateway. It is available as an off-the-shelf product or as part of a cloud development kit (CDK). Growth in connect devices is inevitable and Figure 3. LPC43Sxx block diagram. The LPC18Sxx offers similar features with a Cortex-M3 core. with it comes various levels of risk. NXP offers is an important asset for them to protect, they tion (CRP) feature that can be used to protect a spectrum of solutions to embedded design- are more likely to spend money on tamper-re- the developer’s code. The security features ers to address the appropriate level of code sistant security features. added include an AES-128 hardware accelera- and data security for their applications. n tor, a true random number generator and two Combining a microcontroller with a secure 128-bit locations in one-time programmable element can add banking grade security to memory for storage of AES keys. The two 128- Product News your embedded system (figure 2). A secure bit one-time-programmable (OTP) key loca- element is a tamper-resistant IC that provides tions help protect against attempts at remote Microchip doubles Flash memory and secure storage locations for keys and certifi- key extraction via a software hack. Once the adds new security options PIC24F MCUs cates and often includes hardware-accelerated keys are written (in a scrambled format) into Microchip announces the expansion of its RSA and ECC for faster authentication. While OTP, they are no longer accessible via software eXtreme Low Power (XLP) PIC microcon- the hardware-accelerated AES encryption is or JTAG boundary scan. The keys can only be troller portfolio. Features of the new PIC24F still handled by the faster microcontroller, the accessed by the internal AES hardware block. “GB4” family include an integrated hardware secure element improves device integrity and crypto engine with both OTP and Key RAM takes the lead in establishing trust and pro- The LPC18Sxx and LPC43Sxx microcon- options for secure key storage, up to 256 KB tecting AES keys. trollers include both flash (512kB to 1MB of Flash memory and a direct drive for seg- internal) and flashless versions. The flash- mented LCD displays, in 64-, 100- or 121- NXP Semiconductors recently announced less versions must boot on reset from exter- pin packages. Dual-partition Flash with Live LPC18Sxx and LPC43Sxx microcontrollers nal memory locations – say an external QSPI Update capability allows the devices to hold – extensions of their existing LPC1800 and flash – and then run from the large internal two independent software applications, and LPC4300 Series – that add hardware features RAM. To protect the code from being seen permits the simultaneous programming of for code and data protection (figure 3). The during the boot, an encrypted image can be one partition while executing application LPC18Sxx and LPC43Sxx families include stored in the QSPI and on reset, the LPC18Sxx code from the other. These advanced fea- a number of high-end connectivity features or LPC43Sxx will read the encrypted image, tures make the PIC24F “GB4” family ideal such as Ethernet, two Hi-Speed USB, SDIO verify it with a built-in CMAC message for designers of industrial, computer, med- (important for fastest connectivity to WiFi authentication, decrypt using the AES block ical/fitness and portable applications that modules). There are versions with support for and 128-bit key stored in OTP, and begin exe- require secure data transfer and storage, and Graphic LCD connectivity. Most NXP LPC cuting decrypted code from internal RAM. a long battery life. microcontrollers offer a Code Read Protec- Both microcontrollers are suited to any IoT News ID 3364

October 2015 32 Microcontrollers

Product News

Silica signs distribution agreement inserted, TOBY-L201 recognizes the carrier and with Nordic Semiconductor starts on that carrier’s network. If devices are Silica has signed a distribution agreement with equipped with two SIM cards or a configurable the ultra low power (ULP) short-range wire- SIM chip, TOBY-L201 can be switched between less communication specialist Nordic Semi- operators on-the-fly via a simple AT command. conductor. The agreement authorises Silica to News ID 3375 sell and support the full range of ULP wireless solutions available from Nordic across Europe. Wibu-Systems: lean license News ID 3239 entitlement via SAP Informatics and Wibu-Systems have part- DDC expands power solutions nered over the last few months to develop a capabilities with acquisition of Emrise solution that offers a significant advancement Data Device Corporation has expanded its in back office performance. Through the inte- power solutions capabilities with the acqui- gration of CodeMeter with SAP, license enti- sition of Emrise Electronics Emrise is com- tlement is incorporated within the existing prised of XCEL Power Systems Ltd and Pascall workflow - a superior advantage for ISVs. Electronics Ltd, international market leaders News ID 3237 in high reliability power conversion products. News ID 3229 Infineon: protection from product piracy and IP theft Toshiba expands line-up of ARM Industrial automation, medical equipment, Cortex -M-based MCUs electronic components – plagiarism of capital Toshiba Electronics Europe will enhance its equipment requires effective prevention, such portfolio of ARM Cortex-based microcon- as embedded security solutions from Infineon. trollers with the development of the new TXZ According to the OECD, counterfeiting and family of microcontrollers that support low- piracy costs add up to around 638 billion US power consumption and high-speed opera- dollars annually. The new OPTIGA Trust E tion for IoT and M2M ecosystems. offers an easily implementable solution to News ID 3368 protect manufacturers’ valuable IP from being attacked, analyzed, copied and modified. Conrad launches Finnish News ID 3276 distribution service Conrad Business Supplies now offers its special- ADI: zero-drift, precision op amp ist B2B electronics distribution services to cus- simplifies board design tomers across Finland. Offering a 48hr delivery Analog Devices introduced the first in a new time to Finland’s major industrial and business series of high-voltage, low-noise, zero-drift, centres, Conrad provides Finnish customers the precision operational amplifiers that reduce same rapid, dependable and high quality of ser- system noise, cost, board space, and develop- vice afforded to its existing European markets. ment time by providing on-chip electro-mag- News ID 3245 netic interference filtering and eliminating the need for calibration circuitry. The dual-chan- Infineon: Power MOSFETs make electrical nel ADA4522-2 op amp operates within a sup- appliances more compact and durable ply voltage range of 4.5 to 55 V and exhibits DIY tools such as cordless drills and saws have noise performance that is at least 35 percent to be handy and durable. Therefore, the elec- better than its closest competitor. tronic components used in the applications News ID 3361 need to be space-saving and rugged. Infineon Technologies has extended its StrongIRFET Maxim: quad deserializer Power MOSFET family and thereby provides eliminates components for a solution that fulfills both requirements. automotive camera applications News ID 3379 The MAX9286 quad deserializer from Maxim Integrated Products, enables the design of u-blox: 150 Mbps 4G LTE and surround-view systems for ADAS (Advanced WCDMA module works on Driver Assistance Systems) with fewer com- AT&T and Verizon networks ponents and faster time to market. Just one u-blox announces TOBY-L201, a 4G LTE MAX9286 gigabit multimedia serial link Cat 4 module with 3G WCDMA fall-back, (GMSL) deserializer receives and automat- which works on AT&T and Verizon net- ically synchronizes video from up to four works. TOBY-L201 switches automatically or cameras.Surround view systems are a key via AT command to AT&T’s or Verizon’s net- component in today’s emerging ADAS market. work, without the need to load new firmware. News ID 3295 Depending on which carrier’s SIM card is

33 October 2015 Embedded Wireless Dual wireless protocol solution for the Internet of Things By Tudor St˘anescu, Freescale

This article introduces the Kinetis KW40Z MCU, an ARM Cortex-M0+ based ultra-low power wireless microcontroller platform which is a solution for addressing multi-wireless protocol in the ever-growing IoT space.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is here, and function. Sensor networks are vital organs sioning. Dual-mode devices are not a new whether we know it or not. More and more, within the system, acting as organic sensory concept and they have been around since the everyday objects around us are evolving appendages for all the data being created. As the first systems-on-chip for mobile phones to include capabilities that connect the real in any data network, gateways that bridge two that integrated Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The IoT, world to the virtual universe. From the edge networks or that connect a network and the however, presents new challenges when it sensor node in your home to the vast cloud cloud are essential. Protocols such as Thread comes to combining dual mode capabilities infrastructure—data is flowing from physical define concepts like border routers, which with resource consumption requirements for devices and enabling a virtual representation. route IPv6 packets between a sensor network low power and low cost sensors. Because of Whether it’s an IPv6 address, a QR code, or and a regular LAN or WAN. these constraints, dual-mode devices in the some other means of identification, connec- wireless IoT space need to achieve the func- tivity capabilities are rapidly enabling a mass Another essential concept for protocol specifi- tionality of both protocols via a single radio deployment of the IoT. cations in the IoT space (particularly in wireless frequency front-end through which the pro- sensors networks) is network commissioning - tocols are multiplexed. Multiplexing protocols When designing silicon for these sorts of con- the collection of procedures for creating a net- in a system with very low complexity (a lim- nectivity solutions, low resource consumption work to serve its intended purpose. One of the ited number of logic gates in the silicon lay- is key: low power, low cost of materials, and procedures in this operation is adding a new out) becomes the real design challenge, and an achieving just the right result with the least device to an existing wireless network. Usually opportunity for differentiation between man- effort. These requirements, plus the prolifera- this involves a method of authenticating the ufacturers. To best approach this challenge, tion of terminals for mobile communications, new device to the existing network using out- one must consider both the system architec- have made wireless the preferred method of of-band (OOB) data. The OOB credentials can ture and the protocols themselves. connecting the objects around us. Various be obtained by using a secondary protocol. The protocols that were developed for earlier mar- best example of this would be scanning a QR The system architecture involves hardware kets (such as handheld Bluetooth accessories code on a home automation device that needs and software implementation of the layers of or Smart Energy ZigBee®/802.15.4, which to be commissioned to the home automation the respective protocol stacks. In most cases met the requirements of the IoT space) were network with a tool, such as a mobile phone. hardware starts at the lowest level (radio enriched with technologies such as Bluetooth front-end in the case of wireless devices) Smart and Thread. Gateways and network commissioning pres- and stops somewhere around layer 2, also ent the need (and opportunity to fulfill that known as the data link layer. Above this level, The IoT is as vast a concept as the Internet need) of wireless sensor network devices to hardware automation/protocol acceleration itself, with the ability to grow and spread like have dual-protocol capabilities: the ability becomes impractical for IoT devices because a living organism. The hardware that makes to be part of two networks as a gateway, or of their low resource consuming nature. The up this organism varies in terms of complexity the ability to provide OOB data for commis- Open Systems Interconnectivity (OSI) model

October 2015 34 Embedded Wireless

the Bluetooth Special Interest Group) have already begun defining high-level sets of rules for protocol arbitration, as described in Vol- ume 7 of the Bluetooth specification Wireless Coexistence, also known as the Mobile Wire- less Standards (MWS)Coexistence. While these rules are aimed mainly at coexistence within the electromagnetic spectrum, they are ideal for protocol arbitration as well.

To allow for scalability and modularity of the system, it is important to achieve multiplexing at a given level of the protocol stack, since higher layers can become agnostic. There can be cases where IoT application constraints and needs may dictate otherwise, in the sense that the topmost application layer will evidently be aware of the fact that it has two protocols at its disposal and leverage both of Figure 1. Link layer arbitration them to achieve the desired functionality. Fig- ure 1 shows a proposed system decomposition, describes the data link layer as the collection This mutual awareness can be best translated where the protocol arbitration is achieved in of functions that achieve media access control in a set of rules that define the in-system coex- a firmware layer that runs directly above the and logical link control. This functionality istence of the two protocols. Rules can span data link hardware. This approach eliminates presents the perfect opportunity for dual- or various levels of the data link layer implemen- the gate count cost of having an on-chip com- multi-protocol arbitration/multiplexing by tation, from managing access to the physi- plex arbitration logic, which may be too rigid making two data link layers (of two different cal resource (electromagnetic spectrum), to at design time to cover all the corner cases protocols) aware of each other. managing duty cycles of the respective pro- that can occur over the lifetime of a wireless tocols. Some standardization bodies (such as microcontroller used in IoT applications.

35 October 2015 Embedded Wireless

col. These functions request access and inform each data link layer of the other activity.

The particular natures of the two wireless protocols implemented by the Kinetis KW40Z (especially the inherent low-duty cycle of the BLE activity in the majority of profiles and applications) allow for a default mode of operation for the arbitration logic provided in the firmware from the Kinetis KW40Z enablement software packages. This essentially puts the BLE link layer in a master mode to control media access of the 802.15.4 MAC. In essence - whenever the BLE needs to perform an operation, it preempts the 802.15.4 MAC for this purpose; whenever it is in the process of performing an operation (either advertising/ scanning or connection data transfer) it cannot be preempted by the 802.15.4 MAC. Anal- ysis has shown this to be very practical since 802.15.4 activity is minimally disrupted by the low-duty cycle of BLE applications. This default mode of operation requires a single API function for signaling the 802.15.4 MAC Figure 2. Kinetis KW40Z MCU block diagram during idle periods in the BLE link layer. With more intensive use of the BLE mode (such as in the case of a Bluetooth Smart Mesh) the full set of API functions would be required to allow proper control of the protocol multiplexing.

The next generation of IoT-enabling Kinetis microcontrollers - Kinetis KW41 MCUs - will add even more value by allowing a physical layer-only capability that expands the use case landscape significantly (in addition to IEEE 802.15.4 and new BLE v4.2). This feature provides a generic FSK modem that allows Figure 3. Arbitration API calls configurable parameters for FSK modulation. Together with software data link layer imple- Freescale’s solution for addressing multi-wire- The Kinetis KW40Z MCU offers multi-pro- mentations, this enables compliance of the less protocol in the ever-growing IoT space tocol support that follows the exact model of whole system with several other established is the Kinetis KW40Z MCU- an ARM Cor- link layer firmware arbitration as previously protocols - which use various flavors of FSK tex-M0+ based ultra-low power wireless proposed. The upper layers (BLE host stack modulation. This also presents new chal- microcontroller platform. This platform and Thread/ZigBee stacks) become agnostic lenges for protocol arbitration and multiplex- includes dual wireless protocol support for of the dual-mode nature of the system. The ing approaches, requiring adaptation to two Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) v4.1 and IEEE arbitration firmware layer manages the two hardware implementations of the 802.15.4 802.15.4. The Kinetis KW40Z system-on-chip link layer IP blocks for BLE and 802.15.4. This and BLE link layer plus one software imple- integrates a 2.4 GHz transceiver supporting management takes into account the specifics mentation of another link layer which drives a a range of FSK/GFSK and O-QPSK modu- of each protocol. The asymmetrical BLE pro- custom FSK PHY. The robustness of the arbi- lations, 160 KB flash and 20 KB SRAM, BLE tocol includes two main states: pre-connection tration module implementation, coupled with link layer hardware, IEEE802.15.4 packet (advertising/scanning) and connection (with the specific multitasking capabilities brought processor, hardware security, and peripherals frequency hopping). Meanwhile, the 802.15.4 in by a real-time operating system, make the optimized to meet the requirements of the tar- protocol simply transmits data point-to-point dual-wireless protocol multiplexing solution get applications. These two protocols enable a with a robust flow control mechanism. scale upwards to offer a multi-wireless proto- multitude of use cases for BLE profiles imple- col solution. It all begins with a configurable mentations coexisting with networking layers Freescale protocol arbitration firmware set of rules, which the protocol arbitration on top of 802.15.4 (such as ZigBee or Thread). implementation borrows from the MWS software module helps to configure and man- Furthermore, they serve as an ideal building coexistence logical signaling, described by the age. And as data begins to flow in greater vol- block for implementing the gateway use case Bluetooth specification. The concept of MWS ume from our physical devices into the virtual (routing packets between a ZigBee or Thread is embodied by 802.15.4, co-located on-chip world, these and subsequent connectivity mesh and a Bluetooth Smart mesh network) with BLE in the Freescale solution. Coex- innovations will be a major life force of the and the commissioning use case (using BLE istence is managed via API function calls IoT - allowing it to develop and grow on its OOB data to commission a Thread/ZigBee grouped in service access points between the own terms. n device). software parts of the link layers for each proto-

October 2015 36 Embedded Wireless LTE and optimizing LTE Advanced for machine-type communications By Felix Marchal, Telit

LTE differs from earlier networks with brand-new network core and air interface technologies providing a groundbreaking combination of efficiency and flexibility. The efficient use of spectrum will lead to lower costs and the ability to combine high-speed, low-latency transmission with cost-effective, low bit rate services. LTE-A offers a high data rate of 300 Mbps or more and high-mobility performance.

LTE-MTC (also known as LTE-M) is a con- Mbps is more than adequate for most M2M technology will be the global standard and venient way of encapsulating the optimization applications, so why mention these higher fig- who are marketing solutions that have long of LTE Advanced for machine-type communi- ures? Two reasons: one, they indicate that LTE life times, ten years or more in key segments cations. LTE is marketed as 4G: marketed that is intrinsically flexible and two; they demon- like automotive, cannot rely on 3G since it too way because technically it’s 3.9G. LTE-Ad- strate that development work is ongoing. might reach decommissioning status within vanced (LTE-A) is the real 4G because it meets this timeframe. the ITUs requirements for fourth-generation LTE has followed a well thought-out roadmap wireless systems. Cellular networks have tran- with releases providing successively improv- LTE is the first network technology that can sitioned from circuit-switched 2G through to ing capabilities that result in: higher and more comfortably accommodate demanding appli- packet-switched 3G, 3.5G (HSPDA) and 3.75 consistent data rates for users; higher capac- cations like real-time video surveillance and G (HSPDA +), but 4G represents a quantum ity; and a better overall user experience. It is at the same time provide cost-effective con- step. It involves next-generation technology set to become a common technology standard nectivity for low-speed applications. There- like OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division that will enable economies of scale and have a fore although these apps have widely different Multiplexing) in the air interface and a sim- significant impact on our personal and busi- performance requirements, the market will be plified, flat, all-IP architecture having open ness lives. Moreover, it’s a ubiquitous com- able to build a wide-ranging ecosystem on a interfaces and an Evolved Packet Core (EPC). munications technology that can deliver the single, wide area communication technology. connectivity requirements of the upcoming Moreover, LTE has or will have everything OFDM is immune to selective fading, resil- IoT era. LTE is ideal for IoT applications that going for it: superior performance; ubiqui- ient to interference, and it makes efficient need to respond in real-time, e.g. controlling tous connectivity; scalability; low cost per bit, use of the available spectrum. LTE / 4G net- sensitive equipment, critical smart-grid apps, delivery of whatever QoS customers require, works can therefore accommodate up to 10 industrial alarm systems, traffic control sys- and longevity (MNOs are or will be retiring times more traffic than earlier generations. In tems, and medical devices. The low latency of older network types). addition LTE supports IPv6, which expands LTE can enable connected applications that the addressable IP space to an inexhaustible would not otherwise be possible. LTE net- LTE MTC is part of Release 13 of the global figure. LTE employs UE (User Equipment) works were designed to fall back to an ear- 3GPP standard, which is planned for March categories to define the performance specifi- lier generation network if the attached device 2016. The benefits include: leveraging the cation: the higher the category, the higher the could not detect a 4G signal. This was an early, reliability, pervasiveness, efficiency and lon- data rate. Category 0 download data rate is 1 mandatory requirement since different coun- gevity of 4G LTE, the significant increase Mbps; Category 1 download data rate is 10 tries had different rollout timing and coverage in battery life thanks to longer sleep cycles, Mbps; Cat 6 is 300 Mbps; LTE-A Cat 8 is set plans. In addition fallback is important since while reducing cost/complexity and enhanc- to reach3 Gbps. Higher categories are driven it allows companies to future-proof their solu- ing coverage in what have traditionally been by consumer applications. A data rate of 1 tions. Companies who recognize that LTE difficult-to-reach locations, such as inside

37 October 2015 Embedded Wireless

series comprises band-combination variants designed for the market requirements in North America. The series was developed and manufactured according to ISO TS16949 processes, making it ideal for automotive OEMs.

The M.2 family data cards deliver LTE high- speed data rates for PC OEM device manufacturers. The M.2 form factor is ideal for devices having very high throughput requirements such as PDAs, e-readers, tablets, and mobile computing or consumer electronics. The family enables a natural transition from the Mini Card PCI and Half Mini Card to a smaller form factor. Features include lower power The LE910 V2 is an LTE 3GPP Category 4 module delivering data rates of 150 Mbps downlink consumption, high-speed USB interfaces and and 50 Mbps uplink . support for multiple operating systems.

The LN930 M.2 achieves download rates to 150Mbps through support of 3GPP release 9. There are two variants; both support the various RF frequency bands and band combinations that are deployed worldwide. The LN930 LTE for North America and Europe plus roaming in Asia Pacific. The LN930-AP LTE APAC is especially developed for Asia Pacific.

The LN932 M.2 achieves download rates to 300Mbps through support of 3GPP release 10 LTE Carrier Aggregation. There are two variants. The LN932 M.2 LTE Advanced supports the various RF frequency bands and band combinations that are deployed worldwide. The LN932 LTE Advanced is suited for North America and Europe plus roaming in The LE920 Series combines two high speed cellular modes: LTE and full fallback capability with Asia Pacific. HSPA+. Despite the enormous potential of the market buildings and basements. It will have co-exis- and 5.76Mbps uplink rates. It falls back auto- for smart cars, only 8% of the cars in the world tence with mobile broadband services, thereby matically to HSPA + if it is unable to register are actually connected to the Internet. Never- facilitating new M2M business model innova- onto an LTE network. Two different series theless, all the top 14 automotive tion and the ability to play a key connectivity of variants are available, one for the North role in the various solutions that make up IoT American market and another for the Euro- manufacturers, which account for 80% of the solutions. pean. Both include multiband configurations, market, have a connected-car strategy. This covering different sets of 4G and 3G bands indicates that their strategy is long-term. The LE910 is essentially two high-speed cel- as well as MNO certifications. The LE910 The requisite hardware platforms are being lular modules in one. An LTE 3GPP Category also includes multiple-input multiple-output embedded today in order to launch applica- 3 module delivering data rates of 100Mbps (MIMO) technology, an essential feature to tions tomorrow, and then at a later date the downlink and 50Mbps uplink and an HSPA meet demands for data rate and link reliability. manufacturer can decide how they need to + module delivering up to 42Mbps downlink grow or change. The LE910 V2 is an LTE 3GPP Category 4 module delivering data rates of 150Mbps ATOP platform combines formidable pro- downlink and 50Mbps uplink. It’s ideal for cessing power in order to support almost all regions with high 4G penetration levels. Multi conceivable telematics applications with LTE network support for North America and 4G cellular for voice and data communication. Europe is provided. Therefore it enables the creation of future- proof solutions, both from an application/ser- The LE920 Auto Series combines two high- vice perspective as well as connectivity since speed cellular modes: TE delivering 100Mbps it removes any uncertainty about future 2G or downlink and 50Mbps uplink data rates 3G sunsets. n and full fallback compatibility with HSPA +. LE920 modules are also fully backward compatible with existing GSM/GPRS net- The ATOP platform supports LTE 4G cellular works, which enables connectivity in remote for voice and data communication areas where there is no 3G coverage. The

October 2015 38 Embedded Wireless Fast and secure roaming for wireless applications on public transport By Benjamin Amsler and Jürgen Kern, NetModule

Fast and secure roaming is a term associated with continuous mobile M2M communication on public transport vehicles. The number of applications needing a seamless connection with their counterpart is rising rapidly. The precondition is often the transmission of large data volumes in real time into and out of the vehicles. Figure 1. Several complementary network technologies form modern M2M communications infrastructures in local public (Source: NetModule AG) transport networks.

The trend reversal in communications tech- network capacities are not sufficient enough, nology, and to achieve this, standard modem nology for safety-critical applications is par- especially when offering passenger WiFi, driver software could be optimised to shorten ticularly interesting, since it shows a move ultimately, there is high dependency on the switching delays. Based on this, it is then pos- away from the previously dominant propri- network operator. To counter these deficits sible to operate several connections in paral- etary systems to standardized protocols such companies establish proprietary and dedi- lel, as a result of which the bandwidth can be as 2G/3G/4G/WiFi. For example, this is seen cated networks for M2M applications, mostly increased (link aggregation) and, on the other with communications-based train control based on IEEE802.11 WiFi in the 2.4GHz and hand, the interruption of a single connec- (CBTC) with extremely high demands on sys- 5GHz range, LTE or GSM-R. These networks, tion does not lead to communication failure tem availability and secure communications however, are already reaching considerable (redundancy). in trams, metro and light rail vehicles. For dimensions and reinforce the trend towards some considerable time now driverless and an increasingly heterogeneous network land- However, roaming within one communica- autonomous special vehicles have been real- scape, where islands with the broadband tech- tion technology when changing from one ity in production and distribution companies, nologies LTE and WiFi are emerging within network cell to the next is executed much such as the container terminal at the port of the extensive 2G/3G/4G coverage. more frequently. Broadband networks such Hamburg, as well as fully automatic under- as WLAN in particular, have a wireless range ground railway systems, such as the metro In the near future it is highly unlikely that one that is physically limited to approximately in Copenhagen. The trend towards complete communication technology will completely 100m, which requires frequent cell changes automation cannot be stopped - in the near prevail. Therefore solutions are required that with increasing speeds. One example: a cell future many metro and tram systems will are reliably switching seamlessly between with a range of 200m is crossed in 12s by a “operate driverless”. 2G/3G/4G/WLAN networks and can bun- vehicle traveling at 60km/h. Fast Roaming dle several links to obtain maximum capac- is defined in the standard IEEE 802.11r and But, for several reasons, the existing cellu- ity. Standard devices mostly support seamless is considered as a mechanism for optimiz- lar communications infrastructure does not roaming only between 2G/3G/4G; switching ing this roaming time in encrypted WLAN fully meet the requirements expected by these between WLAN and cellular communications networks. It speeds up the Basic Service Set applications: operators should be able to guar- is possible only using special protocol software, (BSS) transition between the access points antee a seamless connection with maximum e.g. the Mobile IP protocol. The interruption (APs) thanks to an optimized negotiation availability and in the case of CBTC systems of up to a few seconds associated with this of the safety encryption in less than 100ms. for automatic train operation (ATO), a redun- roaming method is largely unsolved - a situ- Compatibility with the IEEE 802.11r stan- dant network infrastructure is absolutely ation that is not tolerable for many applica- dard can usually be activated by means of a essential because of the security requirements. tions. There is, however, a possible approach software driver option. In addition to the nec- Furthermore continuous 24/7 communica- to solve this problem: short switching times essary technical fine-tuning there is a further tion incurs considerable costs and often, the are a basic requirement for the change in tech- challenge with WLAN networks: in contrast

39 October 2015 Embedded Wireless

This on the other hand increases the independence of the network operator.

If highly available and completely seamless communication is required, several connections must be maintained simultaneously and operated using a redundancy protocol. With a system solution, the application does not need to worry about fast roaming. The complexity of relevant algorithms must be hidden behind an abstract communication interface layer that is independent of the network technology. Only in this way can several applications benefit from the optimized connectivity at the same time and without restrictions. As a solution dedicated external M2M routers and /or sophisticated internal software middleware components can be considered. (Source: NetModule AG) Experts in the industry are convinced that Figure 2. Network swapping by means of fast roaming enables continuous and seamless seamless communication with standard communication from the mobile client to the control centre and meets the highest demands. wireless technology will also establish itself for security-relevant applications. The driv- to the administered cellular communications strategies are mostly based on active roaming factors for this are: the products can be networks, where the mobile client is passed ing achieving switching times below 50ms. used worldwide unlike devices based on on to the next cell by a higher-level manage- An additional network management server proprietary protocols. Extensive broadband ment entity, no controlling entity is foreseen (WLAN controller) observes the movements communication is possible thanks to quick for WLAN networks. The client must there- of the clients in its network and actively cell changes using Fast Roaming. Communi- fore decide for itself at what time it dials and proactively points them to the next cell cation across technology borders facilitates into the next cell and which one it dials into (similar to what is done in a cellular phone migration to new technologies because the before the connection breaks off. Almost all network). However, this presupposes an existing infrastructure can still be used in the WLAN devices are still based on a widely exchange of proprietary roaming information transitional phase. Dead spots and failures passive roaming algorithm: the WLAN cell between the client and server, as well as their can be bridged with alternative technologies. is changed only when data is already being interoperability. Intelligent client applications Ultimately, the considerable cost advantage lost and the connection breaks. Understand- with suitable metrics and application-specific and the increased independence from the ably, this approach is not suitable for fast and parameters independently prepare the next manufacturer and service provider should be reliable communication. In this case solution handover, with typically very good results. powerful arguments for investors. n Product News

Microchip expands 32-bit MCU family Wibu-Systems: CodeMeter is Toshiba expands ApP Lite processor with integrated floating point unit series ready for Windows 10 family for IoT solutions Microchip announces a new series within its With its history of effective cooperation Toshiba Electronics Europe has announced high-performance PIC32MZ family of 32-bit and Gold OEM partnership with Microsoft, the launch of TZ1041MBG, an applica- microcontrollers that features an integrated Wibu-Systems was an early adopter of their tion processor designed for use in wearable hardware Floating Point Unit for high perfor- new operating system Windows 10. This has devices such as activity monitoring prod- mance and lower latency in intensive single put Wibu-Systems in a perfect position to ucts, smart watches, bracelet and glasses-type and double-precision maths applications. guarantee a smooth migration for the users of devices. The new IC is the latest addition to News ID 3446 CodeMeter, its all-in-one technology for soft- Toshiba’s ApP Lite TZ1000 family of solutions ware protection, licensing, and security. for the internet of things. ADI: clock jitter attenuator optimizes News ID 3403 News ID 3402 JESD204B serial interface functionality Analog Devices introduced a high-perfor- Mouser now stocking Freescale’s PF3000 Renesas: 16- and 32-Mb mance clock jitter attenuator designed to sup- Power Management Integrated Circuit Advanced Low Power SRAMs port the JESD204B serial interface standard Mouser Electronicsis now stocking the Renesas Electronics announced the release for connecting high-speed data converters PF3000 Power Management Integrated Cir- of two new series of Advanced Low Power and FPGAs operating in base station designs. cuit (PMIC) from Freescale Semiconductor. SRAM (Advanced LP SRAM), the lead- The JESD204B interface was specifically devel- Developed as a companion device to Frees- ing type of low-power-consumption SRAM, oped to address high-data rate system design cale’s i.MX 7 series and i.MX 6SoloLite and designed to provide enhanced reliability and needs, and the 3.2-GHz HMC7044 clock jit- i.MX 6SoloX series of application processors, longer backup battery life for applications ter attenuator contains functions that support the PF3000 is a single-chip power manage- such as factory automation, industrial equip- and enhance the unique capabilities of that ment solution. ment, and the smart grid. interface standard. News ID 3405 News ID 3282 News ID 3425

October 2015 40 Product News

MathWorks: MATLAB release Microchip: MPLAB Code Configurator LDRA: version 9.5 release 2015b and Simulink updates enables set-up of individual CIPs of LDRA tool suite MathWorks introduced Release 2015b Microchip announces an expansion of the LDRA announced the version 9.5 release of its (R2015b) with a range of new capabilities in development platform for its growing portfo- LDRA tool suite. The new updates automate MATLAB and Simulink. In addition to new lio of 8-bit PIC microcontrollers with Core-In- manual processes and provide simple, easy- features in MATLAB and Simulink, R2015b dependent Peripherals (CIPs). Designers can to-use visibility into the relationships between includes updates and bug fixes to 83 other combine these building blocks to perform software artifacts at all stages of the software products. MATLAB updates include new exe- application functions autonomously, and development life cycle from requirements cution engine that runs MATLAB code faster; they can be interconnected with an increas- through verification. Graph and directed graph functions for creating amount of integrated intelligent analogue News ID 3280 ing, analyzing, and visualizing graphs and net- peripherals. works; Add-On Explorer - a single interface News ID 3440 Conrad introduces Link Solutions network for adding community-authored and Math- testing range from Fluke Networks Works toolboxes, apps, functions, models, and TI: advanced WEBENCH tools for Conrad Business Supplies is to begin stock- hardware support; Hardware support for iOS expert power-supply designers ing an updated range of products from net- sensors, Raspberry Pi 2, and BeagleBone Black. Texas Instruments unveiled a series of work testing specialist, Fluke Networks. Based News ID 3417 advanced tools in WEBENCH Power Designer around the LinkRunner and LinkSprinter that provide experienced engineers extensive hand-held network testers, the Link-Solutions Altium updates TASKING compiler design control, analysis and trouble-shooting range provides a cohesive way to conduct cop- for TriCore/AURIX microcontrollers capability to create complex power-supply per, fibre and Ethernet tests, while effectively Altium has announced the release of a major designs. From control-loop compensation managing their results. update to their TASKING compiler for Tri- to simulation export, WEBENCH Power News ID 3281 Core/AURIX microcontrollers which power Designer now puts cutting-edge tools in the advanced automotive applications. This hands of expert design engineers to create LDRA extends integration with new release supports the next generation of power supplies for industrial, automotive and TI’s Code Composer Studio 6 Infineon TriCore technologies and enables communications equipment. LDRA has updated its integration with the engineers to begin early development on News ID 3273 Texas Instruments Code Composer Studio advanced automotive applications before the to deliver increased effectiveness for develop- new AURIX family line is released publicly. Rutronik distributes STM32F7 series ers and productivity for users. As part of the This update is now available to all TASKING with starter kit and evaluation boards update, LDRA has augmented the number of customers on a maintenance contract and STMicroelectronics’ STM32F7 MCU series targets it supports within specific industries trial versions are available upon request. with ARM Cortex-M7 core is now available at and added new features from CCS’s latest ver- News ID 3315 distributor Rutronik with a starter kit and two sion 6. evaluation boards. With ST’s ART Accelerator News ID 3404 Green Hills integrates INTEGRITY RTOS and an L1 cache, the STM32F7 MCUs deliver with Luxoft’s HMI design tool chain the full performance of the ARM Cortex-M7 Green Hills enhances µ-velOSity RTOS Green Hills Software and Luxoft Holding core with code executed from either embed- Green Hills Software has announced a major announce the integration of Green Hills Soft- ded Flash memory or an external memory release of its ultra-small footprint µ-velOS- ware’s INTEGRITY real-time operating sys- News ID 3310 ity real-time operating system with new sup- tem with Luxoft’s Populus Suite HMI design port for the latest processor architectures, tool chain. With the use of Green Hills Soft- SEGGER: protect personal documents improved performance optimizations and ware’s MULTI integrated development tool with free Sign & Verify expanded security and safety features. When chain, this combination allows Populus to run SEGGER Microcontroller has released Sign combined with versatile middleware products on a wide range of automotive grade micro- & Verify, a Windows application which digi- from Green Hills and its technology partners, controllers, enabling the creation of robust tally signs a document to protect it from being µ-velOSity and the MULTI integrated devel- digital instrument clusters with a low mem- maliciously altered. The utility is delivered opment environment offer an ultra-small and ory footprint. with a key generator, provided free of charge fast software platform to quickly develop and News ID 3298 for personal use. Sign & Verify is an easy-to- efficiently run applications on resource con- use tool based on SEGGER’s emSecure. strained devices such as IoT wearables, home Telit: developer kits for TI LaunchPad, News ID 3447 automation and connected industrial sensors. Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Android News ID 3284 Telit announced new deviceWISE devel- Green Hills supports S32V200 oper kits for the TI LaunchPad, Raspberry vision processor from Freescale AdaCore: GNAT Pro available Pi, Arduino and Android, popular platforms Green Hills Software has announced its Plat- for Wind River VxWorks 7 in the IoT developer and maker communi- form for ADAS, including the INTEGRITY AdaCore announced the continuing extension ties. These ‘dev kits’ include programming real-time operating system and 64-bit MULTI of its Wind River VxWorks real-time operat- code libraries and comprehensive, step-by- development tools, for the Freescale S32V200 ing system support, with the implementation step instructions to securely connect and inte- automotive vision processor featuring quad of the GNAT Pro development environment grate these platforms with the Cloud-based ARM Cortex-A53 cores with dedicated vision on VxWorks 7. AdaCore engineers worked deviceWISE IoT Platform – making it easy for processors cores. For the first time, carmak- closely with Wind River on this new prod- developers to exchange data between devices ers and their tier-1 suppliers can develop uct, ensuring that it would support both sin- and web-based and mobile apps, manage data advanced vision and fusion applications on gle- and multi-core systems, as well as other plans, perform remote firmware updates and powerful 64-bit cores and confidently deploy architectures. execute all other essential IoT functions. safe and secure ADAS features. News ID 3287 News ID 3431 News ID 3267

41 October 2015 Product News

Altera: second-generation Nios SEGGER: new block grouping further joint customer projects. Production is II Embedded Evaluation Kit feature for file system expected to begin at the end of 2015. Altera announced availability of the sec- The new block grouping feature for SEGGER’s News ID 3240 ond-generation Nios II Embedded Evaluation emFile file system reduces RAM requirements Kit (NEEK), which features Altera’s non-vol- for block management and thus allows using Renesas: Synergy- Embedded atile MAX 10 FPGA and Nios II soft-core even very large NAND flashes with smaller development at the API embedded processor. The MAX 10 NEEK is a microcontrollers. Block grouping means that The Renesas Synergy Platform is a unique feature-rich platform that provides a fast and the driver treats multiple blocks as a sin- hardware and software platform that enables simple way for embedded designers to expe- gle block to considerably reduce the mem- engineers to start development at the API rience the capabilities of a custom embedded ory used for administrating the NAND flash (Application Programming Interface). It inte- processor in a non-volatile FPGA. The MAX memory. When using external NAND mem- grates commercial-grade software that is qual- 10 NEEK was jointly developed by Altera and ory with microcontrollers, RAM limitation is ified warranted and supported by Renesas its board partner, Terasic. usually the bottleneck. with a new family of microcontrollers and an News ID 3291 News ID 3259 ecosystem of tools and support options into one scalable and secure platform. FTDI Chip: evaluation boards for R&S expands trigger and decoder News ID 3448 SuperSpeed USB-to-FIFO bridge ICs option for RTO and RTE oscilloscopes To encourage the widespread utilisation of its Rohde & Schwarz has again expanded its WITTENSTEIN: RTOS for systems highly cost-effective and easy-to-implement range of trigger and decoder options for the considering safety, that don’t next generation USB interfacing technology, R&S RTO and R&S RTE. With the R&S RTx- require certification FTDI Chip has unveiled a new family of eval- K50, the oscilloscopes help users debug serial WITTENSTEIN high integrity systems uation/development modules. The company’s protocols that employ Manchester or NRZ announce the launch of their latest RTOS FT600/1Q USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ICs, which are coding. The option can be used with a vari- product, SafeRTOS CORE; an RTOS for already in full volume production, are forth- ety of standardized buses such as PROFIBUS, embedded systems where safety needs to be with backed up by the UMFT60XX offering. DALI or MVB as well as with proprietary considered, or designed-in for future consid- News ID 3418 serial protocols such as are typically found in eration. It is ideal for projects where full safety industrial environments and in the aerospace certification/ documentation is not required, Wind River updates Real-Time & defense sector. or at least not required at the start of a long Virtualization offering News ID 3321 safety development life cycle. Wind River has announced a major update to News ID 3258 its real-time virtualization offering that allows GrammaTech: new CodeSonar customers to further reduce cost and inno- release designed for the IoT era Vector Software: integration vate connected devices. The update includes GrammaTech announced availability of with AdaCore’s CodePeer storage virtualization capabilities, enhanced CodeSonar 4.1, the latest version of the com- 3.0 static analysis tool security capabilities, and expanded processor pany’s software analysis tool for C/C++, Java, Vector Software announced an integration support. and binaries. Built to deliver unmatched depth of the VectorCAST test automation platform News ID 3303 of analysis, the latest version of CodeSonar with CodePeer 3.0 - AdaCore’s advanced includes new distributed analysis capabilities, static code analysis tool for Ada, including Altium: TASKING toolset for Infineon’s deeper tainted data analysis, and binary anal- version 2012. TriCore/AURIX microcontrollers ysis support for x64 processors. News ID 3253 Altium has announced a free embedded soft- News ID 3333 ware development toolset for Infineon’s Tri- GrammaTech: CodeSonar achieves Core/AURIX product line as part of their Mouser stocks TI’s C2000 Delfino ISO 26262, IEC 61508, and strategic partnership. This toolset was devel- Microcontroller LaunchPad Kit EN 50128 certification oped as part of a major update to the TASK- Mouser Electronics is now stocking the C2000 GrammaTech announced that their static ING compiler for TriCore/AURIX, which Delfino F28377S LaunchPad evaluation kit analysis product CodeSonar has been certi- adds a number of new features and enhance- from Texas Instruments. This new TI Launch- fied for use in the development of safety-criti- ments for advanced automotive application Pad is an easy-to-use, rapid-prototyping kit cal software according to several international development. The Lite Edition of the TASK- for TI’s C2000 Delfino F2837xS portfolio of standards: ISO 26262, IEC 61508, and EN ING VX-toolset for TriCore includes a one microcontrollers and offers 200 MHz of 32-bit 50128. These three standards were designed year license and can be requested now on the floating-point performance, newly integrated to define the functional safety of electronics Infineon website or the TASKING website. accelerators, as well as high-integrity analog throughout their lifecycle within automotive News ID 3341 and control peripherals. systems, medical devices, and railway applica- News ID 3442 tions, respectively. Phaedrus: Segger upgrade to News ID 3329 emFile file management system SYSGO: PikeOS hypervisor technology eases RAM bottleneck captures automotive market Rohde & Schwarz: analyze broadband Segger has upgraded the emFile file manage- After Continental also Magna now relies on and pulsed signals up to 85 GHz ment system for embedded applications by SYSGO’s Hypervisor PikeOS to consolidate The new R&S FSW85 high-end signal and adding a block grouping feature to reduce complex applications in automotive elec- spectrum analyzer is the only instrument on the amount of RAM needed for block man- tronics. The new technology will initially be the market to cover the frequency range from agement of NAND flash memory. NAND can used in Magna’s 360-degree view system Sur- 2 Hz to 85 GHz in a single sweep. This makes now be used for gigabytes of data with even roundVue and integrates camera system and it possible for users to test baseband and RF with smaller microcontrollers. vehicle information system on the same hard- with a single analyzer. Since no external har- News ID 3279 ware. The new platform creates the basis for monic mixers are required, the R&S FSW85

October 2015 42 Product News

makes the test setup much simpler. An inter- parking, security and surveillance as well as that is far beyond typical 8-bit MCUs while nal preselection suppresses the image fre- industrial control. UBC-221 is optimized simplifying the design experience and reduc- quency and other spurious emissions that specifically for IoT development. Features ing memory cost. commonly occur during harmonic mixing. include: 1 x UART, 2 x GPI, 2 x GPO, 2 x News ID 3274 News ID 3244 10/100 Ethernet (one supports PoE), 1 x USB, 1 x MiniPCIe, 1 x SD and 1 x 12V DC input. Telit: IoT portal combines connec- MathWorks: model-based design used UBC-221 also supports wireless connection tivity management with application to design and build wave farm such as Wi-Fi, 3G/4G, Bluetooth, and ZigBee enablement functions MathWorks announced that Carnegie Wave through onboard MiniPCIe expansion. Telit released the Telit IoT Portal which con- Energy has used Model-Based Design to News ID 3297 solidates a suite of advanced connectivity design and build the world’s only operating management functions with the company’s wave farm. MATLAB and Simulink enabled ADI: low power buck regulator boosts deviceWISE IoT Application Enablement Plat- Carnegie Wave Energy’s engineers to develop battery lfe for IoT applications form. The service enables companies to deploy, unique technology for generating clean elec- Analog Devices introduced an ultralow power configure and manage end-to-end IoT deploy- tric power from the ocean’s waves. buck regulator that extends battery life in ments from a single, Cloud-based portal. News ID 3452 portable devices by achieving the industry’s News ID 3389 highest ultra-light-load power conversion effi- Green Hills announces ciency. With a 90 percent efficiency rating and Infineon: MOSFETs deliver MULTI 7 IDE release consuming only 180-nA quiescent current, highest energy efficiency in space Green Hills Software has announced a new the ADP5301 buck regulator is designed to constrained applications release of its MULTI integrated development deliver maximum power for a longer period Infineon has launched a new family of Stron- environment. With this release, Green Hills of time than previously achievable and is ide- gIRFET MOSFETs for DC powered circuits Software continues to evolve its software ally suited for Internet of Things (IoT) appli- including battery powered circuits, brushed development suite with features designed to cations, including wireless sensor networks and brushless DC (BDLC) motor drives. The increase developer productivity and speed and wearable devices such as fitness bands MOSFETs can bring highest energy efficiency time to market. and smartwatches. to end-applications such as power and garden- News ID 3451 News ID 3378 ing tools, light electric vehicles, drones and e-bikes that demand a high level of energy PLS: UDE 4.4.6 supports all functions ERNI: subminiature connectors with efficiency but are restricted in available space. of ST’s new SPC58 E-line MCUs 0.8mm pitch in antimagnetic versions This is made possible by the compact Medium PLS Programmierbare Logik & Systeme is ERNI Electronics has expanded its 0.8mm Can DirectFET housing featuring a new layout. already able to offer the Universal Debug MicroStac SMT connector series to include News ID 3269 Engine 4.4.6 debugging and testing solution, antimagnetic versions with 12 pin (single row) for the first samples of STMicroelectronics and 54 pin (dual row). The MicroStac compo- Conrad: PLCs based on ARDUINO new SPC58 E-line in ST’s multi-core automo- nents are based on a patented hermaphroditic Conrad Business Supplies has introduced a tive microcontroller family. The new SPC58 design. The special design enables reduced range of new, highly flexible and customisable E-line MCUs are among the most sophisti- logistic and inventory costs. programmable logic controllers exclusively cated automotive MCUs currently available News ID 3316 from CONTROLLINO. These new products on the market. are suited to a variety of automation appli- News ID 3384 Renesas: RX111 Safety Package cations, including temperature management, Renesas Electronics launched its RX111 advanced lighting and media control. They LDRA: tool suite selected for structural Safety Package, to significantly reduce devel- join Conrad’s wide selection of over 1500 coverage and standards compliance opment time to implement functional safety PLCs from other leading manufacturers LDRA announces that Wind River has for industrial equipment and devices, such including SIEMENS, C-Control, WAGO and selected the LDRA tool suite and DO-178 as sensors, safety controllers, and industrial Phoenix Contact. Qualification Support Packs for both inter- drives. Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Inter- News ID 3345 nal software quality assurance and to help net of Things movements are driving the need Wind River customers expedite the qualifica- for more robust and inherently safe devices on Renesas: Bluetooth smart wireless tion and certification of their aerospace and the factory floor, from the PLCs down to the solution to accelerate use of defense applications. The selection of LDRA sensors at the edge of the factory network. Embedded devices in IoT hinged on the ability of its tools to achieve 100 News ID 3396 Renesas Electronics announced a new wireless percent MC/DC coverage at both source and solution that supports the Bluetooth Smart near assembler levels—a mandatory requirement Microchip: two new PIC MCU families field wireless communication standard. The for object code verification—and to perform with core-independent peripherals new RL78/G1D Group of microcontrollers has data coupling and control coupling analysis. Microchip announces two new 8-bit fami- been developed by combining the low-power News ID 3241 lies that expand its growing portfolio of PIC RF Transceiver Technology for Bluetooth Low MCUs with Core-Independent Peripher- Energy with Renesas’ expertise on consumer Advantech: Embedded IoT gateway als (CIPs). 8-bit MCUs can now be used in and industrial MCUs, and on-chip periph- with Intel Quark SoC x 1000 a much broader range of applications, due eral devices necessary for wireless commu- Advantech launched the UBC-221 IoT gate- to the growing number of these intelligent, nication. By employing an evaluation kit and way solution powered by the Intel Quark SoC interconnected CIPs that combine to perform Bluetooth-SIG qualified protocol stack, the x1000 processor and designed as a compact functions autonomously, without the core. new MCUs enable system designers to conduct size, high capability, multi-connectivity gate- Because these functions are deterministically evaluation of wireless characteristics and initial way. UBC-221 is suitable for IoT or automa- and reliably performed in hardware instead evaluation of communication behaviors. tion control applications such as smart city of software, CIPs enable system performance News ID 3264

43 October 2015 Product News

Digi-Key partners with ARM University 2.5” SATA drive bay, and 1 Mini PCIe slot IBASE: 4x4K digital signage player with Program to offer ‘Lab-in-a-Box’ for Wi-Fi or mSATA module. In addition, hardware EDID emulation function Digi-Key Electronics announced their part- the IP65 compliant on front panel offers the IBASE Technology launches the SI-304 four nership with the ARM University Program to capability to withstand harsh and severe envi- HDMI output digital signage player support- distribute the innovative ‘Lab-in-a-Box’ (LiB) ronments. The KS104-CD is aimed to utilize a ing up to 4096 x 2160 4K resolution for every to higher educational institutions around the variety of applications such as KIOSK, digital display channel. SI-304 is not only ideal for globe. The LiB contains ARM-based technol- signage, and retail solutions. 2x2 video walls, but also suitable for menu ogy and high quality, rigorous training mate- News ID 3270 boards in restaurants, as well as in electronic rials that support electronics and computer displays in banks, airports and shopping malls, engineering courses. MSC presents SVGA TFT LCDs from to convey dynamic information and targeted News ID 3262 NLT with long-life backlights promotions. MSC Technologies offers two SVGA (800 x 600 News ID 3436 TI: integrated USB Type-C pixels) TFT LC displays from NLT for harsh power delivery controller industrial applications. The LCDs integrate IBASE: fanless, slim and compact Texas Instruments introduced the first all- long-life LED backlights that provide 100,000 digital signage player in-one USB Type-C and USB Power Deliv- hours of operation, a new breakthrough for IBASE introduced the brand new SI-102-424 ery controller, which integrates a port NLT products. This corresponds to a continu- fanless digital signage player based on the power switch and port data multiplexer. The ous operating time of eleven years for 24/7. Embedded G-Series SoC that is perfect for TPS65982 USB PD controller is the only inte- News ID 3275 digital signage, retail or hospitality applica- grated circuit available that provides the full tions. The SI-102-424 Signature Book takes power path, operating as a Single- or Dual- MSI: fanless embedded BOX PC with advantage of the high performance, low-en- Role Port and enabling a variety of host and Broadwell or BayTrail platform ergy consumption and APU integrated device power implementations. MSI released a new compact-size industrial Radeon 8KE graphics that present dynamic News ID 3307 BOX PC, MS-9A69. It’s a fanless embedded contents and compelling visuals to deliver an BOX PC that comes with the Broadwell or engaging customer experience. ICOP introduces 933 MHz indus- the BayTrail platform, satisfying different News ID 3301 trial-grade Panel PC family applications that require high-performance ICOP Technology introduces with the indus- or low-power computing kernel. MS-9A69 Advantech: Embedded trial-grade PPC series a new 933 MHz Panel supports 2 or 3 independent displays, versa- computing platforms with 6th PC family developed to be deployed as lean, tile DC input of 12V/19V/24V, 2 Mini-PCIe gen Intel Core processors low-power HMIs (Human Machine Inter- expansion slots, and rich I/O of 4 LAN (w/ 2 Advantech unveils its latest range of embedded faces). The compact and fully x86 compatible, optional), 6 USB, and 6 COM ports, offering computing platforms equipped with 6th gen- rugged Panel PC series in metal housing fol- the flexibility for machine builder and system eration Intel Core processors. These platforms lows the trend towards client/server architec- integrators to build systems for automation, comprise Computer On Modules SOM-5897 tures with central processing clouds and slim, digital signage, IoT gateway, kiosk, POS, and and SOM-6897, an MI/O Extension Single distributed control terminals as well as indus- bus or in-vehicle applications. Board Computer MIO-5272, Industrial Moth- trial-grade thin client installations. News ID 3454 erboards AIMB-275 and AIMB-585, and Dig- News ID 3232 ital Signage Players DS-780 and DS-980. ARBOR: ARES 5800 models News ID 3434 ARBOR: upgraded 10.4” rugged feature modular design, multiple tablet with Intel Celeron processor expansion and rich onboard I/O ICOP: ETX Computer-on-Module with ARBOR Technology has launched the ARBOR ARBOR Technology added a productivi- DM&P Vortex86DX3 processors Gladius G1052C 10.4 inch rugged tablet PC ty-enhancing expansion to its programmable ICOP Technology introduces the new to complement its growing lineup of mPOS, embedded controller product line-up. The VDX3-ETX, a DM&P Vortex86 DX3 proces- warehousing and logistics tablet PCs. The new ARES 5800 series is based on the 4th sor-based ETX Computer-on-Module. OEMs G1052C, powered by an Intel Celeron N2930 Generation Intel Core i5 Processor, and sup- can deploy the fully ETX 3.0-compliant dual quad-core processor, is an upgrade to the ports up to 16GB DDR3L SO-DIMM memory core computer module with up to 1.0 GHz previous G1050 version in performance and for optimal performance and efficiency. Cur- clock frequency into all existing ETX-based specification improvements rently, there are three models (ARES-5800, applications to substitute older x86 processors News ID 3230 ARES-5803 and ARES-5830) differentiated in that are currently being discontinued. terms of their I/O interface and expansion bus. News ID 3278 DFI: 10.4 inch industrial touch panel News ID 3265 PC available in 5-wire resistive EKF: miniature CompactPCI Serial IPC and projected capacitive MEN: wireless access Point and systems in 4U/32HP 19-inch technology DFI is introducing a new product: KS104-CD. safe gateway into the IoT Rugged, versatile, economic – the SRS-3201- KS104-CD is an industrial panel PC based The NM50 is a maintenance-free WLAN BLUBOXX series of miniature Compact- on Intel Atom N2800 processor that provides access point for connecting networks in PCI Serial IPC systems from EKF is suitable better data processing and lower power con- demanding railway and automotive applica- for all industrial requirements, even under sumption in comparison to the last generation tions. Its robust design and reliable data trans- harsh conditions. The small rack is built of Intel processors. It is available in both 5-wire mission make the NM50 an ideal gateway high-quality 19-inch components. With its resistive and projected capacitive 10.4” LCD solution for vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to- low dimensions of only 172 x 168 x 208mm true-flat touch screen panel to meet a custom- land communication in safety-critical envi- (4U/32HP), the BLUBOXX provides space ers’ diverse range of needs. The touch panel ronments of the IoT. for up to five CompactPCI Serial boards (sin- PC comes with 1 VGA for display output, 2 News ID 3411 gle size Eurocard style). The BLUBOXX sys- audio jacks, 2 Giga LANs, 3 COM, 2 USB, 1 tems include a bottom mount fan unit and an

October 2015 44 Product News

industrial grade removable power supply. are available in this new generation of product. News ID 3260 News ID 3369

Kontron to deploy 6th Gen Advantech: highly secure ATX industrial Intel Core processor family motherboard for ATM/KIOSKs Editors Kontron announced that the latest 6th gen- Advantech introduces SIMB-A31, a new Jürgen Hübner eration Intel Core Processor will power new industrial-grade ATX motherboard powered phone +49(0)8092-2477413 fax +49(0)8092-2477429 Kontron boards and modules to be released in by a 4th generation Intel Core i processor. [email protected] early 2016. With these boards, Kontron’s cus- Advantech also integrated its new SUSIAccess tomers can take full advantage of Intel’s latest 2.0 Pro version with SIMB-A31. The abundant Wolfgang Patelay and most powerful processor version, Sky- I/O connectivity and PCI slot expansion sup- [email protected] lake-H and U processors. Kontron maximises ports various industrial applications such as Tony Devereux its product portfolio with new long life DDR4 Automation, ATM and Kiosks. [email protected] SODIMM memory with up to 32 GB, which is News ID 3336 also available as ECC memory. For Reader Inquiries and Address Changes please contact: News ID 3390 Amplicon announce Impact-D [email protected] 100 DIN Rail PC Axiomtek: Celeron quad core The new Amplicon Impact-D 100 has been Sales & Marketing Director SoC-based Embedded system designed and manufactured in the UK to the Manfred Blumoser phone +49(0)8092-2477411 Axiomtek has launched eBOX626-842-FL, the highest standards. Designed to be compact, fax +49(0)8092-2477429 energy-efficient fanless embedded box sys- rich in I/O and running the latest quad core [email protected] tem suited for rugged and extreme applica- ATOM processor, the Intel ATOM E3845. Claudia Mellein tions with its extended temperature and wide Amplicon has carefully chosen the compo- [email protected] range voltage capability. The extreme compact nents and CPU family to ensure optimal per- eBOX626-842-FL utilizes an onboard Intel formance vs. heat and power consumption, Christiane Lockner Celeron quad core processor J1900 2.0GHz this ensures the system will operate and con- [email protected] to boast both excellent performance and trol your application 24/7 with many years of Sales Office - UK and USA, Benelux, ultra-low power consumption. The ultra-slim maintenance free running. Scandinavia fanless embedded computer supports sys- News ID 3337 Blue Sky Communications tem memory up to 8 GB with one DDR3L- Malcolm Cameron 21 Cliffe Avenue 1066/1333 SO-DIMM socket and offers Axiomtek: industrial Mini-ITX Westbrook, HDMI and VGA display outputs, offering not motherboard handles most Margate, Kent CT9 5DU, UK only high computing capability but also excel- demanding HD video formats phone +44 (0)77 88-10 84 11 fax +44 (0)80 82-8010 57 lent graphics performance. Axiomtek has launched its new industrial [email protected] News ID 3332 Mini-ITX motherboard, MANO842, featuring quad-core SoC, fanless design, advanced Sales Office - Asia SGET: industrial grade MXM2 connector graphics performance, and 12VDC/STD Jean Cheng, [email protected] for Qseven standard with 10-year-LTA Vivian Hung, [email protected] ATX power input. The powerful MANO842 Innovative Media Information & Services SGET Standardization Group for Embed- is equipped with a quad-core Intel Cele- 7F-3, No. 26, Sec. 2, Ming-Quan East Rd. ded Technologies highly values the long term ron J1900 processor with Intel HD Graphics Taipei 104 Taiwan availability of its Standards and the related engine, delivering outstanding computing, phone +886 2 2563 1186 key components. With regard to Qseven this graphics and media performance at a compet- Head Office especially concerns the 230-pin MXM2 sys- itive price. tem connector. This was initially designed to News ID 3355 work as a cost-effective board-to-board connector for consumer graphics cards and has MEN: Box PC for wireless communi- come close to its end of life in this function. cation in automotive applications ICC Media GmbH Iriso, is now manufacturing and delivering The robust box PC BL70W was especially Rauwagnerstr. 5 the MXM2 connector which is vital for the developed for wireless applications in mobile 85560 Ebersberg / Germany Qseven standard. markets. Due to its compliance to the E-mark Editorial Office UK News ID 3335 requirements it is well suited for automotive 36a Blackacre Road applications in busses, construction vehicles Theydon Bois AAEON enters 4K realm with EPIC-BDU7 or agriculture machines. Despite its com- Essex, CM16 7LU AAEON unveils the most advanced entry pact design it offers sufficient space for nine Copyright© All rights reserved. in their EPIC form factor board lineup, the antenna slots in total as well as a multitude of No part of this publication may be reproduced or EPIC-BDU7 that comes with Intel’s 5th Gen- application-specific I/O. transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior express written permission of ICC Media. eration Core processors, delivering high per- News ID 3352 Although we make every effort to present up-to- formance at a very low power consumption of date, accurate information, boards&solutions will not be responsible for any errors or omissions or for any 15W. Intel’s latest processors bring enhanced EKF: SAS/SATA host controller results obtained from the use of such information. graphics processing capabilities with support XMC mezzanine module The magazine will not be liable for any loss caused by the reliance on information obtained on this site. for 4K resolution video and media content EKF unveils the DS1-LEOPARD, a SAS/SATA Furthermore, boards&solutions does not warrant the while offering 3-independent displays from host controller XMC mezzanine module. The accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics in this magazine. The opinions expressed the board’s LVDS, VGA, DisplayPort, and Mini SAS 4x connector is suitable for attach- in the articles are those of the authors and not eDP options. Support for the latest operating ment of up to four external SAS or SATA stor- necessarily the opinions of the publisher. systems and today’s high speed I/O devices age devices, such as hard disk drives, SSDs, or

45 October 2015 Product News

streamer tapes. The on-board Marvell control- 6th generation Intel Core processor family is a ler is provided with a Gen2 PCIe x4 interface. brand new micro-architecture built on Intel’s COMPANY PAGE All I/O ports are compliant to Serial Attached 14nm manufacturing process. The new 6th SCSI (SAS-2.0), and in addition to Serial ATA generation Intel Core processor family offers (SATA 3.0). dramatically higher CPU and graphics per- ADLINK 9/48 News ID 3351 formance, a wide range of power and feature scalability, and new advanced features that Avalue 22 Avalue introduces Open Frame boost IoT designs from the edge to the cloud. Commell 29 Tablet product line News ID 3399 Avalue is unveiling a new product line – Open congatec 13 Frame Tablet – including OFT-07W01 (7-inch), congatec: COM Express compact modules OFT-10W01 (10.1-inch), OFT-15W01 (15.6- with 6th gen Intel Core processors Digi-Key 2 inch), OFT-21W01 (21.5-inch), OFT-23W01 congatec has introduced four new COM (23.6-inch) to meet different applications size Express compact modules parallel to the EBV 7 need. Open Frame Tablet series carry Intel launch of the new 6th generation Intel Core Advertisers Index BayTrail-T/CR Z3735F Quad Core CPU with processors. The new modules are specially Ecrin Systems 23 high performance but lower cost. designed for challenging applications that EKF Elektronik 27 News ID 3377 demand high performance in sealed, fanless system designs. They feature a 15 watt config- Elma Electronic 35 Advantech: 3.5” Embedded SBC urable TDP and are equipped exclusively with with flexible expansions the energy-saving ULV-SoC editions based on Express Logic 15 Advantech announce the release of MIO- new 14nm microarchitecture. Compared to 15 5251. Utilizing Intel’s latest quad core Celeron watt modules with fifth generation processors, Green Hills 5 J1900 2.0GHz processor, with even the same users benefit from improvements in graph- CPU performance as 3rd generation Core i3, ics and processing performance, enhanced MEN 21 MIO-5251 is positioned best choice between energy efficiency and more high-speed I/Os. Mesago 47 previous generation Atom and Core i platforms. More than a standard SBC, Advantech Typical fanless applications for congatec Microchip 11 MIO-5251 in a 3.5” MI/O Extension (146 x COM Express compact modules can be found 102 mm) form factor offers wide temperature in medical and industrial imaging, central Mouser 17 operation from -40 to 85 control room technology, shop floor ter- News ID 3362 minals, HMIs, robotics, professional gam- MSC Technologies 3 ing, infotainment, professional AV, smart IBASE: SMARC module with ARM video surveillance, autonomous vehicle con- Peak System 33 Cortex A9 i.MX6 processors trol, computer-aided situational awareness Portwell 25 IBASE Technology announce the release of as well as high-end digital signage applica- RM-F600-SMC, a SMARC module powered tions. Graphics card free, triple-head systems Review Display Systems 35 by the high performance Freescale i.MX6 – for example in the areas of retail and kiosks, processor running 1.0 GHz. RM-F600-SMC where embedded systems control up to three RUTRONIK 31 supports an image capture interface for MIPI independent cash or vending machines – cameras, 18/24-bit parallel LCD, LVDS and present a further application example. HDMI interface, as well as a full-HD 1080p cessor command, control, communicate and hardware video codec engine. The conga-TC170 modules, with COM Express compute applications in the military, aero- News ID 3371 Type 6 pinout, are equipped with the ULV-SoC space and transportation markets. editions of the sixth generation Intel Core i3/ News ID 3395 Acceed: mobile Box PC i5/i7 processors. For the first time, they offer a features 16 PoE ports configurable TDP (Thermal Design Power) of AAEON announces 6th gen Intel The new fanless and highly compact Box PC 8.5 to 15 watts, which simplifies matching the Core processors product line-up Nuvo-3616 from Acceed is equally suited for application to the system’s thermal design. The AAEON unveils a string of products from the mobile applications and fixed industrial instal- power supply has also been optimized, which company’s board and system line-ups pow- lations. It is distinguished by its 16 Ethernet in addition to the new microarchitecture also ered by 6th Generation Intel Core processors. PoE ports with a total of 160W output. Its fur- contributes to the energy efficiency and allows Every generation of processors brings new ther performance features include an optional a longer turbo-boost. features and improved capabilities to the table third generation i5 or i7 quad core processor News ID 3409 while inheriting the merits of its predecessors. from Intel, up to four 2.5” SATA HDDs with News ID 3398 RAID support in patented easy swap trays for Concurrent: 3U VPX board featuring fast changing and the robust fanless casing Xeon processor E3 v5 family ADLINK: new products based designed for industrial application. Concurrent Technologies announces their on 6th gen Intel Core and latest News ID 3344 first processor board based on the Intel Xeon Intel Xeon processors processor E3 v5 family. TR E5x/msd is a 3U ADLINK announced the first of fourteen new Avalue: SLP-SKL, EMX-Q170 and VPX board featuring the quad core Intel Xeon products in various form factors based on the EAX-Q170 based on 6th gen Intel Core E3-1505M v5 processor with up to 16GB of 6th generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3 processors Avalue Technology is unveiling SLP-SKL, DDR4 ECC DRAM and a rich assortment of and latest Xeon processors, coming to mar- EMX-Q170 and EAX-Q170, based on the 6th I/O interfaces. These features mean that TR ket in the second half of 2015 and early 2016. generation Intel Core processor family. The E5x/msd is particularly suited to multi-pro- These current Intel processor-based offerings

October 2015 46 Product News

feature an updated 14nm microarchitecture to distribute the components of the product Pentair acquires Pigeon Point Systems to and added support for Ultra HD 4K resolu- line for industrial enclosure technology and expand portfolio for monitoring systems tion displays. system platforms to the North American mar- Pentair announces the acquisition of Pigeon News ID 3408 ket and to offer the related services. Point Systems, a producer of high-qual- News ID 3309 ity management components, focusing on ADLINK: COM Express module with open modular platforms as AdvancedTCA, Xeon processor and Iris Pro graphics MSI: 5th gen slim fanless system MicroTCA, CompactPCI and VPX. By com- ADLINK will offer its first COM Express fulfills display-critical applications bining Pigeon Point Systems products with Basic Size Type 6 module incorporating the MSI WindBOX series embedded computer Pentair’s broad range of Schroff products, latest Intel Xeon E3-1200 processor and Intel family members are known as slim, compact, Pentair will be able to provide an expanded Core i7 processor with Intel QM87 Chipset. yet powerful solutions for the reliable opera- product portfolio, increase presence glob- Featuring improved graphics and process- tion in industrial applications. MSI is pleased ally and broader technical expertise to serve ing performance compared to previous gen- to release WindBOX III Advanced, MS-9A75, Pentair customers, and their ever increasing eration processors, the Express-BL is ideally to enhance the completeness of WindBOX needs in embedded computing and reliable suited for carrier-grade edge device solutions series embedded system. system monitoring and control. that demand intense graphics performance News ID 3308 News ID 3319 and multitasking capabilities in a space-constrained environment. Toradex announces upcoming COM Pentair introduces Schroff heat News ID 3305 based on Freescale’s i.MX 7 processor conductors for conduction cooling The announcement of Freescale’s i.MX 7 pro- Pentair announced the introduction of Flex- HEITEC signs partnership cessor has created a lot of excitement at Toradex, ible Heat Conductors (FHCs) to help ensure with Wakefield-Vette who will be among the few hardware partners effective thermal transfer for conduction cool- Since HEITEC took over the electronics pack- showcasing a platform based on the i.MX 7 ing. This new development is filed as patent. aging systems line from Rittal more than five processor, during Freescale’s official launch of Made from heat dissipating metal, FHCs are years ago, this extensive product portfolio the same, early next year, extending its exist- particularly well-suited for small single-board has been successfully enhanced, manufac- ing portfolio of COMs. The new module will systems and larger systems that cannot be air- tured and marketed predominantly in Europe. offer a robust and secured platform for build- cooled with active fans for or perforated ven- Wakefield-Vette has now entered an exclusive ing products targeted toward IoT applications. tilation designs. strategic partnership with HEITEC in order News ID 3407 News ID 3349