Really Real Time

Real-time systems must respond to events in a timely manner. We view this as a software thing, when in fact it is a systems problem. The hardware and software should be tuned to achieve the response times we need.

In this talk you’ll learn how to profile software execution times, understand hardware design tradeoffs for working with high-speed systems, and we’ll look at some common myths about how real-time systems should be designed. And, as embedded people, we often have the ability to trade off hardware versus software to achieve the best performance.

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Marketing Malarkey and Some Truths About Ultra-Low Power Design

Many systems need to run for years from small batteries. Vendors offer many solutions and even more promises. Alas, too often these are, at the best, wildly optimistic.  Pick an MCU which only needs one electron a year to remain in a sleep mode and your system will still likely drain the battery in months.

This talk will present the results of 18 months of experiments on battery life, MCU sleep currents, and “sneak” circuits that drain charge from batteries. It is complemented by engineering analysis of real-world systems and what their actual power requirements are. Does PCB contamination effect battery life? Can a big capacitor give a millisecond power boost? What is the effect of temperature on these decisions?

The answers are surprising, and the bottom line is that none of us will achieve the battery lives touted in the trade press.

To achieve years of operation from a coin cell an MCU-based system must use the right components, careful analysis of energy needs and availability, and the proper algorithms in the firmware.

In this talk you’ll learn how to make these tradeoffs. And you may never trust a vendor promise again!

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Learning from Disaster

Civil engineers have learned how to avoid failure from their rich history of bridge collapses, tunnel floodings, and building disintegrations. The firmware world is quite different; it seems we all make the same mistakes, repeatedly. Yet most problems have similar root causes. In this class we’ll examine a number of embedded disasters, large and small, and extract lessons we must learn to improve our code. It’s a fun, wild ride though avoidable catastrophes!

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The Microprocessor at 50

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of the microprocessor. It’s hard to imagine a world without this device! Yet the story goes back long before 1971. In this session Jack gives the history of electronics from the early days to today, with special focus on computers.

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Live Q&A - The Microprocessor at 50

Live Q&A with Jack Ganssle for the keynote session titled The Microprocessor at 50

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