In this issue:

• Quantum Platform Nano™ (QP-nano) Released under Dual Licensing
• Latest Quantum Development Kit for Windows®
• Check out EmbeddedGurus.net!
• What Embedded Programs Have to do with Hollywood?

Quantum Platform Nano™ (QP-nano) Released under Dual Licensing

Quantum Platform Nano™ (QP-nano) has been released under the terms of the GPL open source license as well as traditional commercial licenses (dual licensing). The Generally Available (GA) release of QP-nano™ is available for download from the Quantum Leaps web site. More...

Latest Quantum Development Kit for Windows®

The latest Quantum Development Kit™ for Windows (QDK-Windows) now provides integration with the plain Win32-GUI API as well as with MFC. Additionally, the QDK now supports both the desktop Windows, as well as embedded Windows CE 5.0. The QDK-Windows has been released under the terms of the GPL open source license as well as traditional commercial licenses (dual licensing). The Generally Available (GA) release of QDK-Windows is available for download from the Quantum Leaps web site.

Check out EmbeddedGurus.net!

There are currently just a handful of bloggers writing about embedded systems development. The recently launched EmbeddedGurus.net is dedicated to provide blogs, forum, and community support for embedded folks.

The posting reproduced below comes from the "State-Space" blog hosted at EmbeddedGurus.net.

What Embedded Programs Have to do with Hollywood?

I still remember the "Triumph of the Nerds" PBS special, where Steve Jobs recalled his early days at Apple and how the young Apple team picked up the brains of scientists at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) . Steve explained how PARC researchers showed them three revolutionary things: (1) the graphical user interface (GUI), (2) computer network, and (3) object-oriented programming. Out of these three things, Steve confessed to have understood only the first one at the time. This alone, however, proved enough to launch the Mac, and the rest is history.

I believe that the embedded industry still hasn’t learned from PARC even as much as Apple did some three decades ago. The question standing in my mind is: Why most embedded programs aren’t structured the same way as virtually all GUI programs are?

If you’re baffled why I am comparing embedded systems to GUIs, consider that just about every embedded system, just like every GUI, is predominantly event-driven, by nature. In both cases, the primary function of the system is reacting to events. In the case of embedded systems, the events might be different than GUI (e.g., time ticks or arrivals of data packets), rather than mouse clicks and button presses. But, the essential job is still the same: reacting to events that come at difficult to foresee order and timing.

Even the earliest GUIs, such as the original Mac, or the early-days Windows, were structured according to the "Hollywood principle", which means “Don't call us, we'll call you". The “Hollywood principle” recognizes that the program is not really in control—the events are. So instead of pretending that the program is running the system, the system runs your program by calling your code to process events.

This reversal of control seems natural, I hope, and has served well all GUI systems. However, the concept hasn’t really caught on in the embedded space. The time-honored approaches are still either the “superloop” (main+ISR) or an RTOS, none of which really embodies the “Hollywood principle”.

It really takes more than "just" an API, such as a traditional RTOS. What you typically need is a framework that provides the main body of the application and calls the code that you provide. Such event-driven real-time frameworks are not new. Today, virtually every design automation tool for embedded systems incorporates a variant of such an event-driven framework. The frameworks buried inside tools prove that the concept works very well in very wide range of embedded systems.

My point is that a Real-Time Framework (RTF) should, and I believe eventually will, replace the traditional RTOS. What do you think?

Embedded Systems Conference Boston

September 25-28, 2006
Hynes Convention Center
Boston, MA

See us at booth # 1037-A

(Disruption Zone)

"Practical Statecharts for Embedded Systems" Presentation

Miro Samek will present a two-part class: "Practical Statecharts for Embedded Systems". Participation in this event requires registration for ESC Boston'06 classes.

Latest Releases of QP

	3.2.01 Dual License Release	3.2.01 Commercial Only Release	1.5.00 Dual License Release	1.5.00 Commercial Only Release
	3.2.01 Dual License Release	3.2.01 Commercial Only Release	N/A	N/A