Developers of SaaS applications, mobile apps, and enterprise software have been enjoying the benefits of the cloud for several years now. Scalability and collaboration stand out in our daily development, testing, and integration work. However, there are additional hurdles to product readiness for embedded system software developers.
traditional hurdle
Corporate counterparts can iterate and test and submit to an automated validation and deployment process, all via secure cloud access, from their lab, home office, or even local coffee shop However, embedded system developers must provide software that runs. Works as expected on specialized devices such as industrial robot controllers and automotive control units.
The need to access the physical device hardware adds an unavoidable aspect. Without remote access to the device’s target processor board (which is possible, but often complicated), developers are stuck in the lab. Access may still be restricted because the hardware is “in demand”. Throwing money at the problem by bulk ordering boards for lab use or setting up home offices and labs is a fragile approach that can leave an organization at the mercy of his chain of supply. is. Additionally, the lack of target hardware can hinder the extensive development that is increasingly required to support the complex software in today’s intelligent “edge” devices.
Organizations have used software emulators instead of target boards to alleviate the problem to some extent. With an emulator, software running on the developer’s local machine acts like a “translation layer” between the architecture of the machine and the physical board. However, this method requires more CPU cycles, which can impact software performance. Additionally, developers often face issues of mismatches between emulators and boards, causing software churn and ultimately lag.
Jump over the hurdles and into the clouds
So, is there a way to relieve embedded developers from the burden of using target hardware or software emulation for iterative code development and testing? is in the cloud that has provided
Cloud computing has evolved significantly in recent years. The term “resilience” has become a general term referring to the degree to which a system can meet the demands of its current workload. That is, it automatically scales up or down with the provisioning or deprovisioning of compute resources. Such elastic computing infrastructures range from media streaming, artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to the Internet of Things (IoT) where edge-to-cloud solutions are rapidly evolving for data processing. It is now widely used for everything.
Common to enterprise software application development is another important area of embedded systems software, where the need for a real-time operating system (RTOS) is essential. Enables large-scale cloud-based development by enabling multiple instances to be launched for individual developers, remotely distributed teams, etc. by using a cloud-ready version of the RTOS within the elastic computing infrastructure I can do it.
But what about the processor hardware on which these cloud instances run? It’s “back to square one” in terms of the developer’s trust that it will run on the target hardware. was intended.
“Board in the Cloud”
Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the cloud vendors, A processor with ARM64, an architecture commonly used in embedded devices. Named Graviton, these processors can run his AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure and successfully run instances of application development products. As a result, iterative development and testing (both collaboratively and at scale) can be done with full ARM64 binary parity, without the need for software emulation.
This gives solutions that put RTOSes on this cloud infrastructure to a whole new meaning in terms of value. It completely eliminates the need for software emulation. It also greatly reduces the need for target hardware, which is currently only required for final deployment testing. And because it’s cloud-enabled, development processes can be integrated with automated continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows as part of development operations (DevOps). Reduced developer friction and accelerated development cycles result in faster time to market.
From a collaboration perspective, this opens up possibilities for teams to collaborate on projects from anywhere in the world and efficiently integrate with partner products and systems.
BlackBerry QNX: Expand Your Work on AWS
One solution available to developers of mission-critical embedded systems is BlackBerry® QNX®. At AWS re:Invent in November, BlackBerry QNX demonstrated the industry-leading QNX® Neutrino® RTOS running on AWS EC2 infrastructure on Graviton2. This demonstration marked the debut of his BlackBerry QNX technology in the cloud. Embedded system developers can now take advantage of BlackBerry QNX technology to significantly reduce the time to market for their products.
Enterprise and Embedded Systems Developers – Having Coffee Together
And finally, you can watch embedded system software developers code, test, and integrate alongside their enterprise software counterparts over secure cloud connections. You can effectively bring your lab into the coffee shop.
For more information on the QNX Neutrino RTOS, the game-changer that accelerates embedded systems software development, visit BlackBerry QNX.
