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Ron Fredericks writes: There are three separate views to what defines an effective Board Support Package (BSP). I believe each of these views is correct as independent descriptions of a BSP. But together these views provide insight into the embedded target from equally important perspectives or engineering disciplines. Read this post to learn more about the essence of embedded systems and how Wind River’s VxWorks BSP architecture has been a critical success factor in comparison to many other real-time embedded operating system executives and kernels available today.

I chose to discuss Wind River’s VxWorks BSP because of my familiarity with their product line, my understanding of their BSP as a competitive product compared to other real-time kernels, and because of my industry accomplishments working with Wind River’s BSPs:

• Ron Fredericks wins Wind River’s prestigious Navigation Award for designing, launching, and marketing the first online interactive social network for BSP’s. more>
• Ron Fredericks wins Aiysis’ Million Dollar Club Award for nurturing a Wind River partnership between VxWorks and Aiysis DriveWay BSP tool kit that generated over one million in annual sales. more>
• Ron Fredericks co-author’s an article with Xilinx on How to Design Field Upgradable Systems based on FPGA Internet connectivity with VxWorks BSP’s. more>
• Ron Fredericks produces an online video: How to Prototype a Device Driver [or BSP] in Less Than – Wow! – 5 Minutes for a Freescale application processor / communications co-processor System on Chip (SoC). more>

A similar high level discussion can not be made for most embedded Windows or embedded Linux BSP’s today. This is because the BSP for these monolithic kernels are not as modular as a real-time executive kernel such as VxWorks. Indeed other real-time kernel vendors can and do take advantage of the BSP too. But, the VxWorks BSP just took more advantage of this natural separation between board support and kernel tasks earlier in the marketplace and has been an advantage for its customers as a result ever since.

Figure 1 – Embedded device with BSP connected to a host workstation

As shown in Figure 1, most BSP’s today, even those for embedded Windows and embedded Linux, do have a robust set of boot options. In many cases a BSP can be used on its own to network attach to a shared file system where the full operating system and application can be loaded. In this way, a device under development need not be the device where development takes place. The BSP in this case forms the basis for a cross-platform development environment – a big plus for developers of embedded systems. Developers often expect cross-platform development to include a BSP with a limited network stack to load new code onto the target hardware during a cold reset. The BSP might use JTAG on-chip run-time control, RS232 serial port, FTP, Bootp, TFTP and RARP, or even a command shell with a full network stack, as the boot loading protocol. But what ever host to target connectivity is used, cross-development allows a high end workstation to be used for time-saving development along with an easy way to download the resulting compiled relocatable object code or a linked and located image onto an embedded target.

For hardware vendors, the BSP is a very useful partner tool. If a hardware vendor makes a set of boards along with a bus pre-assembled as a subsystem or just a single board computer, the BSP allows its clients to leverage this hardware for software development right away. So a hardware vendor can select major operating systems that meet the needs of its target client base and offer a BSP suitable for these operating systems. Usually the BSP is not a licensed product from the operating system vendor and can be bundled royalty free or under very libral license fee conditions. In this way, the operating system vendor or the open-source community, can partner with this hardware platform as a known reference for direct end products or for development of custom products. The horrible alternative is a slow hardware bring-up using new hardware for the first time to build a unique BSP – a very slow and expensive procedure where few software debug tools are available. JTAG or other N-wire run-control devices can be used with an operating system vendor’s debugger in some cases when a robust BSP is not already available. Silicon vendors and I/O device vendors can leverage this technical marketing strategy too.

I encourage Microsoft and embedded Linux communities to consider improving their BSP strategy to deliver more value from a separate BSP structure too. I also encourage my readers to go ahead and submit comments to this blog post if you know of other vendors with good BSP designs as the marketplace is always changing.

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Abstract

Ron Fredericks writes: Engineers want to build compelling products that meet their project requirements. Corporate executives want to invest in innovative people that build products that, in turn, meet their market’s window; while, both want to stay within budget. Yet both groups may feel overwhelmed with the prospect of expressing the very heart of their inspiration at some critical times during the life of these projects. In today’s post, I try to address this issue from the engineer’s perspective reaching out to the financial decision makers that ultimately control the purse strings of every project.

Table of Contents

Introducing Financial-Speak to Engineers
ROI Example: Embedded Linux
Evaluating Incremental Cash Flows
ROI Example: Simple Project Comparisons Using Net Present Value
ROI Example: Evaluating an Infrastructure Project
ROI Example: The Original Design Manufacturer
References
Errors and Changes Planned for this Blog Post

Introducing Financial-Speak to Engineers

In a previous post I introduced the idea that ethics might be the common framework between this dichotomy in communication between engineers, marketers, and executives. In this post, I suggest that engineers might apply this ethical approach by taking some time out to learn the language of business development from a financial management perspective – a conversational framework suitable for an interdisciplinary team concerned with engineering risk and strategic business value, but expressed using financial definitions.

The term Return On Investment (ROI) can be used for all three disciplines: engineering, marketing, and finance. ROI is just vague enough to cover most any discussion an engineer may encounter through-out the life of a project: from the initial decision to fund your project, to evaluating change requests during the design, build, test, and deployment cycle of an ongoing project. Evaluating ROI from a financial perspective is an ethical approach to decision-making because the financial terms I promote for this ethical framework have very precise meanings. So precise in fact, that I too have had to go back and rewrite several sections of this blog post thanks to One Nomad’s Blog comments received in this blog’s first posting.

It was the lack of financial precision embedded within my first draft for this blog post which my guest reader used to convince me of my own mistakes. Yet to be clear, identifying my mistake is also my gain. Effective communication is a process of two or more people sharing ideas…

Learning to converse and plan using financial terms for ROI decision-making can level the playing field between engineers, marketers, and business executives since ROI itself is not a common financial term. Engineers practicing Financial-Speak centered around ROI as the goal, can help reduce many of the common problems related to individuals trying their best to participate in team decision making. This leveling of the playing field – between team members – can also enhance the power of their conversation, leading the way for the much sought after innovations that are in popular demand today.

Consider building a financial model around ROI before presenting your most important technical needs to executives, marketers, and other decision makers. Read on to learn how. Of course ROI from a financial perspective is not the only way to build effective interdisciplinary teams with engineers involved. In a future post I may suggest a corollary to this ethical approach for executives and marketers who would like to reach out to engineers – using Six Sigma, CMMI, and emerging techniques developed by Dr. Thomas J. Buckholtz as useful processes seeped in ROI terminology.

Figure 1: Net Present Value Equation

Where:
is the Net Present Value function, in dollars
is a project’s Cash Flow, in dollars
is the hurdle Rate, in percent per period
is the Initial Investment (a negative number), in dollars
And:
is the cash flow’s time increment, or period
is the total number of cash flow periods for
Time increment for and might be in years, quarters, or months, for example

ROI Example: NPV’s Effect on Embedded Linux

The equation in Figure 1 forms the heart of my “ethics in engineering” proposal. Namely, the sooner a new device gets to market, the sooner a firm can realize new income. New income realized sooner, is much better than income realized later. A finance discussion around NPV would call this time’s negative impact on the value of money. I’m talking about the exponential effect that the prevailing interest rate, R, has in the NPV equation shown in figure 1.

A few years ago several of the leading embedded operating system suppliers used this equation to show that embedded Linux was a poor choice for new embedded device development projects. One such paper published by Dr. Jerry Krasner in 2003, Total Cost of Development, presents the typical argument pretty well. At that time Dr. Krasner and many others may have been right. Now in 2007, times have changed significantly. A recent blog entry on CNET shows the missing element from Dr. Krasner’s report and is a Harold for the embedded industry going forward: Oracle touts Linux deals.

How times have changed…

Because of the significant adoption of Linux in enterprise projects, the total project cost of using embedded Linux has gone down too. Indeed, the migration and reuse of enterprise Windows operating system application programming interfaces (API’s), kernel components, and development tools into embedded device projects was a key part of Dr. Krasner’s report, see link above. Dr. Krasner concluded at the time that embedded Windows CE made the best choice for new projects from a total cost of ownership perspective – just another way of looking at NPV!

Now the ROI benefits behind projects that select embedded Linux follows Dr. Krasner’s logic perfectly. Embedded Linux is now experiencing the same reduced total cost of ownership that only embedded Windows CE enjoyed just a few years ago. The reduced total cost of ownership comes from new and improved tools, components, and API’s that cross over from enterprise projects to the embedded marketplace. There is a significant overlap in Linux kernel updates, components, and tools driven by enterprise projects that are also suitable for use in embedded projects.

The available pool of engineers that know how to work with Linux can now support embedded development projects that use embedded Linux too. The marketing movement around the value and excitement of using Linux may also reduce the cost of taking an embedded device to market. In short: lower upfront costs, more options, more solutions, and faster time to market. Even Dr. Krasner has decided to post an update to his old white paper showing total cost of development to be favorable for embedded Linux projects. Download his updated paper.

None of these enterprise driven benefits exist with respect to the traditional embedded real-time operating system (RTOS). To be clear, there are other benefits to using an RTOS. I discuss one significant benefit to using an RTOS in another post: How to Leverage the Value of a Board Support Package.

Evaluating a Project’s Incremental Cash Flow

NPV is just one example of applying the principle of ROI to making project decisions. NPV falls into the general category of capital budgeting, a process of evaluating proposed investments into new projects. The capital budgeting process is concerned only with incremental cash flows. So the vague concept of ethics can be transformed into a specific financial discussion.

Two financial functions can measure time’s effect on money:

(1) Net Present Value (NPV) expressed as a monetary value,
and

(2) Internal Rate of Return (IRR) expressed as a percentage.

Where:

Net Present Value (NPV) of a capital budgeting project is the dollar amount of change in the value of the firm as a result of undertaking the project [Ref: Financial Management: Principles and Practice P.234]. The mathmatic definition for NPV is:

NPV = IV + Sum[ CF(k) / (1+R)^k ], k ranges from 1 to N

Where:

IV = Initial Investment (a negative number)
CF(k) = cash flow value (project outputs – project inputs) for period k
R = hurdle rate per period
period = a unit of time, typically year, quarter, or month
N = total number of periods for the project

Present Value (PV) is the value today of a future, or expected, cash flow. The mathematic definition for PV is:

PV = Sum[ CF(k) / (1+R)^k ], k ranges from 1 to N

NPV can be expressed in termis of its present value (PV):

NPV = IV + PV

Hurdle Rate is the required rate of return before launching a new project. The hurdle rate must be carefully chosen. It can be expressed as a percent per period. The period is commonly defined as one year, but other convenient time period could be selected such as one quarter, or one month. The same unit of time will need to be associated with cash flow. Other rate terms can be used in addition to, or instead of, hurdle rate: discount rate, cost of capital, or interest rate.

Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is the discount rate at which the
NPV of the project is zero. [Ref: Financial Management: Principles and Practice P.240]. The mathematic definition for IRR is related to NPV:

0 = IV + Sum[ CF(k) / (1+IRR)^k ], k ranges from 1 to N

NPV and IRR are related to each other:
What follows is a list of relationships between NPV and IRR. Use these relationships after calculating the NPV and IRR for each of the proposed project alternatives.

(1) If NPV(CF,R, IV) = 0,
then the hurdle rate, R = IRR

(2) For any set of cash flows estimated for a prospective project,
there is only one value for NPV.
But, the same project model can result in several IRR values,
where NPV = 0.

(3) If IRR > Hurdle Rate,
then a prospective project may make an acceptable
investment.

(4) If IRR >> Hurdle Rate (i.e. significantly greater than),
then a prospective project may carry too much risk.

(5) The hurdle rate includes both a minimum desired rate
of return for a project, and a threshold representing risk.
(5-a) A typical hurdle rate for an E-Business project
might be 15%.
(5-b) A typical hurdle rate for an embedded systems project
might be 18%.
(5-c) Embedded Components, Inc. is focused on lowering risk
for its members by promoting the re-use of pre-existing
components through its online marketplace
for embedded device manufacturers and their
communities.

(6) In general seek to maximize NPV, not IRR.

(7) Yet, if two projects have NPV curves that cross over each
other,
then the interest R where the curves cross is called
the Crossover Point.
(7-a) If the Crossover Point > IRR,
then accept the project with higher NPV.
(7-b) If the Crossover Point <IRR,
then accept the project with higher IRR.

(8) An NPV value of zero also means the investment into that
project would neither gain nor loose value for the company.

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Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Engineer, project, requirements, executive, invest, budget, financial management, Return On Investment, Six Sigma, CMMI, Dr. Thomas J. Buckholtz, cash flow, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Hurdle Rate

Ron Fredericks writes: The HHP-16K EPROM Emulator allows application code to be read by Hewlett-Packard’s (HP’s) HP-41 calculator. Instead of inserting a small pre-built module into one of the four module bays of the calculator, such as the PPC ROM module discussed in one of my previous blog posts, this unit allows a person to use custom built programs previously stored into EPROMs (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory devices) using software development tools and an EPROM burner.

Figure 1: HPP-16K Emulator Connected to HP-41 Calculator

Photo by Ron Fredericks using Canon EOS-10D 34mm fluorite lens, UV Filter, 1.5s & f/22 @ ISO 100, on tripod, from Embedded Components’ HP lab collection.

Business Development using EPROM

The HHP-16K represents, a stepping-stone from source code to mass marketing through the use of HP’s commercial software development tools and it’s professional services team. Advertisement and promotion of HP’s professional services to productize HP ROM modules from EPROMs could be found within HP’s own software development tools, and in newsletters — newsletters published by HP and by independent self-assembling developer communities such as national and international versions of the HP Computing Club or HPCC.org. HP’s fee for this service was not trivial, often HP computer clubs would collect donations from 100′s or 1000′s of their members to raise the $20,000 to $60,000 (in 1980′s dollars) to produce these ROM modules for their members – all before the Internet.

This emulator is an example of an important design pattern for modern day software developers forming into ecosystems around mass marketed smart consumer devices!

A typical consumer device in today’s market often has gigabytes of flash memory or other extensions via cellular networks, enterprise networks, or WI-FI Internet access, that behave just like this old 16 kilobyte emulator. With this design pattern – developers can improve the consumer’s experience on popular devices by adding new software applications, middleware, content, and development tools. While at the same time, developers gain significant new business development opportunities for themselves, content providers, software tools vendors, professional services teams, and device manufacturers alike.

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Ron Fredericks writes: In my last two posts:

• I discovered Dean Lee‘s Code Highlighter plugin for WordPress as the blogging solution for my source code display needs.
• I fixed a word wrap problem in Dean’s plugin.

During my research to solve the word wrap problem, I discovered a few more issues leading me to update Dean’s plugin with the latest version of GeSHI (an open-source project: Generic Syntax Highlighter for php. Highlight many languages, including PHP, CSS, HTML, SQL, Java, Assembler, and C for XHTML compliant output) and removal of unused files. I thought other WordPress bloggers might like to take advantage of the latest code too, so I document the steps needed to build a clean plugin with the latest components.

Flow Chart / Swim Lanes Widget
Below is a Flash widget I built to document the steps needed so you can roll your own up-to-date plugin. Follow these steps and you won’t have to be a programmer to get the benefits from the latest versions of these program components. The widget actively links to the latest PHP files and CSS classes:

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Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Dean Lee, Code Highlighter, WordPress, plugin, component, Flow Chart, Swim Lanes, Flash, widget, PHP, CSS

Ron Fredericks writes: In my previous post, I discuss Dean Lee‘s source code syntax highlighting plugin for WordPress. It delivers all the great features of the GeSHi open-source highlight project for Wordress bloggers.

Yet some source code displayed badly – turning a developer’s nice clean style into a chaotic and messy format. I demonstrated the display problem using a perl sendmail script I plan to discuss in a future blog post. The problem had to do with some kind of whitespace word wrap issue.

I tested various features of CSS and DIV tag attributes created by Dean’s plugin and the GeSHi php code. I am happy to say, I found a simple one-line solution. My solution is in updating Dean’s CSS container class to force white space not to wrap.

Here is my solution:
Add this property to Dean’s “ch_code_container” CSS class:

white-space: nowrap;

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Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Dean Lee, source code, syntax highlighting, plugin, WordPress, GeSHi, open-source

Ron Fredericks writes: I have a problem in common with many software engineers and technical managers – “How can I display source code within my blog?”

See, the problem starts when the source code to be displayed interacts with the blogging software itself and then corrupts the blog’s own loop-and-display engine. Thus, the blog page becomes corrupt or at the very least, becomes mis-formatted and hard to read. Of course it would also be nice to color code a software snippet similar to a source code editor to make the posted source code easier to read.

I tried several techniques during my Internet search for “WordPress source code formatting”. I discovered a common theme – there are source code display and highlighting methods available – in fact too many are available. So the search became a “needle in the haystack” time sink. And the sad fact, most choices have some severe limitations.

But at last, I found Dean Lee’s blog post: Source Code syntax highlighting plugin for WordPress (V1.1)

Dan’s pluglin for WordPress has all the features I was looking for:

• installs as a simple plugin for WordPress
• usage within a blog post is easy through the use of the pre tag
• source code displays in its own container with line numbers for reference
• a reader should be able to easily select a range of displayed source code and copy it for their own use (without also selecting the displayed line numbers)
• source code display should not break my WordPress blogging software

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Ron Fredericks writes: This is just a note to point out to my readers that drupal is an easy content management system to use. Over time, ECI will be adding more of the drupal features to improve its community experience. Drupal includes multi-user blogging as well as forums and many other core and extended modules. You can see my new drupal personal site in action from here [updated for Drupal 6.4 on 9/10/08].
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Photo by Ron Fredericks using Canon EOS-10D 34mm fluorite lens, circular polarizer, 1.5s & f/22 @ ISO 100, on tripod, from Embedded Components’ HP lab collection.

Ron Fredericks writes: I envision the day when community software engineering projects are commonplace for embedded devices. Like the PPC ROM demonstrated back in 1981.

What follows is a review of the PPC ROM community development project – a first for smart mobile devices, then an offer to help others in moving this great body of open source professional tools to modern devices: comment on this post if you are interested in this project or in community development of software for embedded devices in general.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have powerful new applications built on top of our routers, digital recorders, HDTV‘s; or even industrial process monitor and control systems, or lab instruments; hey how about our cars and public transport vehicles? No I don’t mean that you buy a new device or car with new applications pre-loaded by the device manufacturer and shipped with the soon to be obsolete device – I mean groups of experts organizing into communities with other experts to design, develop, test, document, package, and deliver new software solutions onto devices for their own members’ sales channels. Does this sound far fetched?

Community development around open-source software such as Java, the Linux operating system, or Mozilla‘s Firefox web browser have emerged as reusable project management solutions to complex software engineering issues – See Asa Dotzler’s Job Morph: Herding Cats to see how Mozilla motivates workers who aren’t actually on the payroll.. So I know the engineering community is ready for a new challenge – one that has already been solved back in 1981 – one that affects the speed of technology reuse around the globe today.

Photo by Ron Fredericks using the same settings as the previous photo, of his favorite mobile smart device.

So let me share with you a project I recently discovered. It’s embodied in a user’s manual published in 1981 by a community of engineers – no, not your typical product manual ticked out on a company payroll. The forward describes a first-of-its-kind effort behind this user manual, and the embedded software it documents. The author expresses his excitement in being part of the “first community developer” project for a smart mobile computing device and it is so similar to the smart devices we use today! Did I mention that Linux, or even community networks like web and email didn’t exist back then? How did they do it? Can we learn from their effort and apply this community project, or its method, for today’s embedded devices? I think the answer is yes – with a little help from the embedded operating system suppliers’ communities and some innovative hardware device manufacturers. The embedded operating system, software community project management, and smart device platforms have come to a wonderful cross-road that truly supports community software development as a ripe low-hanging opportunity for us today.

The forward to this 500 page user manual describes the struggle and accomplishment of 100 developers who formed their own community project to develop a “ROM” or read-only memory module they called a “PPC ROM” that plugs into an HP personal computer that is now 25 years obsolete called an HP-41. The “PPC” reference is to the names – Personal Programmable Calculator, or Personal Programmer’s Club, or Prolific and Productive Computing – as well as the PPC Calculator Journal that was the herald for the HP calculator’s developer community back in the day. Similar to the commonplace e’zines we read, or get spammed with today. But different because the taxonomy created by today’s almost endless stream of eBlasts, tagged content, blogs, forums, and RSS feeds by themselves don’t create an engineers’ sense of community. The spontaneous motivation to organize into a sense of community requires a mood that has only been created by a real person – a person that shifts a group of developers’ paradigm . Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, community, software, engineering, projects, embedded device, router, digital recorder, HDTV, industrial, instrument, car, vehicle, open-source, Java, Linux, Mozilla, Firefox, project management, community developer, PPC ROM, Personal Programmable Calculator, Personal Programmer’s Club, Prolific and Productive Computing, PPC Calculator Journal

Ron Fredericks writes: In a previous post I talked about using a blog site as an influential place to communicate. Why is it influential? Primarily because an individual can self-publish their thoughts while linking to other posts and sites that are relevant. To take this concept one step further, the question comes up “How shall I motivate other bloggers to promote my story/initiative/whatever?” Clearly, if you can just get a whole bunch of influential bloggers to write about your story in a positive way, well then your message would be read and perhaps even accepted by many more people.

The problem is that individual bloggers don’t like to be told what to do with their blogging activity and time. I read an interesting post this morning on Stephen Walli‘s “Once More unto the Breach” blog titled Blogging and Traditional Marketing that describes the situation exactly.

There may not be a single way to use bloggers to generate influence and create improved marketing exposure. However, Steve Rubel‘s Micro Persuasion blog post titled How to Pitch Into the Long Tail News Curve describes how to work with bloggers more effectively:

• Identify Leading Blog Influencers
• Plant the Seed with the Bloggers
• Hit the Mainstream Press
• Regenerate the Story with Other Bloggers

But the answer was clearly explained by Stephen, take the time to build a relationship with a blogger before you ask them to help you create influence or build marketshare.

Reference:
Morgan Stanley: An Update from the Digital World: from Morse Code to blogs, 2004

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, motivate, promote, Stephen Walli, Once More unto the Breach, Marketing, Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion, Long Tail, Influence

Ron Fredericks writes: Recently I came across a reference to an article I wrote for ISA, sponsored by Visuality Systems, on Brian Mork‘s Increa Technology Blog. The article presented the emerging use of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) for connecting industrial instruments from the plant floor to the engineering work stations and on into business operations.

Embedded Components, Inc. has a short [and free] online lecture introducing the CIFS protocol to the embedded device manufacturing community. The CIFS protocol is likely the most ubiquitous file sharing middleware used in the desktop and enterprise computer markets today. Wow! If its so common why haven’t I seen it? Its embedded so it just works in the background.

What is the CIFS standard?

• Samba for UNIX users sharing MS Windows files and more
• Microsoft CIFS made for DOS and embedded in Windows
• SNIA: The open standard

What is the new event presented in this online lecture?

• CIFS NQ is available for {many embedded and real-time operating systems such as VxWorks, Integrity, and threadX} now
• Prior to CIFS NQ, there was no practical way for an embedded designer to take advantage of this very easy to use and very common desktop computer protocol

References:

• Get the CIFS NQ source code from Visuality Systems
• Watch the lecture: Introduction to the Common Internet File System (CIFS)
• Wikipedia: Server message block or SMB

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Visuality Systems, Brian Mork, Increa Technology Blog, Common Internet File System, CIFS, Embedded Components, embedded device, middleware, Samba, Microsoft, DOS, Windows, SNIA, open standard, CIFS NQ, VxWorks, Integrity, threadX, protocol, Server message block, SMB