QNX wins Best in Show at FTF India

This just in: QNX Software Systems has won the Best in Show award at the Freescale Technology Forum in India.

QNX took top honors for its multi-core tools and RTOS, which were showcased on a dual-core version of the Freescale QorIQ P2020 communications processor.

QNX takes a two-pronged approach to multi-core support: 1) the QNX Neutrino RTOS, which supports symmetric multiprocessing, and 2) the QNX Momentics Tool Suite, which provides a system profiler for diagnosing and optimizing multi-core software behavior.

Using the system profiler, a developer can track threads as they migrate from one core to another, diagnose IPC flowing across cores, and identify resource contention between threads on different cores. As a result, it becomes much easier to pinpoint bottlenecks and identify the best strategy for improving performance.

Here's an example of the system profiler being used to diagnose a missed deadline on a quad-core system (click image to magnify):



To learn more about how the system profiler helps improve the performance of multi-core systems, check out this whitepaper.
 

Can smart phones increase reduce driver distraction?

Phones and cars don't mix, right? I mean, everyone knows that handholding a phone while driving is distracting, dangerous, and just plain dumb.

But what if your phone could warn you of potentially dangerous traffic conditions? What if it could emit an alert when your driving behavior suggests you are distracted?

For Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics, those aren't academic questions. He believes that the smart phone is "rapidly becoming a platform for delivering safety systems into vehicles."

For this reason, Roger argues that government agencies should avoid the temptation to ban all use of mobile phones in cars. Otherwise, they will deny drivers the very real "distraction mitigating" capabilities of smart phones. To read Roger's blog on this issue, click here.
 

QNX gets new VP of sales and marketing

In case you haven't noticed, QNX has hired Derek Kuhn to take over the post of VP, sales and marketing.

Derek is that rarest of birds: An engineer who totally gets marketing and PR. He groks that, to succeed, a technology business must do two things: 1) build the best mousetrap, and 2) ensure that everyone knows it. Emphasis on the everyone.

If you want evidence of Derek's marketing savvy, you don't have to look far. He was, for example, the driving force behind the LTE Connected Car, which, within days of its introduction, was covered by publications such as Wired and Scientific American, and by blogs such as Mashable and Engadget. (If you're unfamiliar with these blogs, they're currently rated the world’s #2 blog and #4 blog, respectively, by Technorati.)

Prior to joining QNX, Derek held senior positions at Alcatel-Lucent, including vice president of emerging technology & media and vice president of strategy for the Americas region in the office of the CTO/CMO. As a global business lead, he was responsible for Alcatel-Lucent’s ecosystem for emerging technologies, such as 4G mobile connectivity and wireline broadband. Earlier this year, he won Alcatel-Lucent's 2010 CEO Award.

For more details on Derek, check out the press release. 

Protect your software against Heisenbugs

By definition, Heisenbugs are sensitive to being observed: They appear sporadically during normal operation, but disappear when the developer attempts to track them down in debug mode. The very act of debugging eliminates the subtle timing interactions or other conditions that trigger these bugs into action.

It's no surprise, then, that Heisenbugs are often difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. Nonetheless, developers can create applications that are resilient to these maddeningly elusive defects. They can, for example, use virtually synchronous replication (VSR), a technique described in a recent whitepaper by Chris Hobbs, a kernel developer at QNX.

A few days ago, QNX posted this paper on its website, along with a paper on memory analysis (co-authored by yours truly) and two papers on developing in-car telematics systems. Here they are:

• Protecting Applications Against Heisenbugs


• Memory Errors in Embedded Systems: Analysis, Prevention, and Risk Reduction


• Wideband Speech Communications for Automotive: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly


• Rapid Development and Reusable Design for the Connected Car