Business from technology

Embedded software

Competence

VTT designs software for platforms ranging from highly resource constraint embedded systems like sensor motes to systems with significant computing resources such as mobile phones. VTT has a track record not only in software development for different operating/runtime systems but also in analysing, visualising, and enhancing the performance of embedded platforms with the main focus on energy efficiency.





The forecast of the energy demand of mobile devices by the Boston Consulting on the left shows the importance of energy efficiency for future embedded systems.

Challenges

More and more everyday objects are equipped with computing functionality through embedded systems. These heterogeneous systems make great demands on embedded software:

• transition from single-core to multi-core to many-core processors
  
• managing the complexity and heterogeneity of embedded systems
  
• simplifying the maintenance of embedded systems for end-users
  
• energy efficiency of battery powered devices.
  

Solutions

• management of software component integration and quality
  
• software for different operating systems (TinyOS, Contiki, Symbian, etc.) and platforms (XScale, ARM, AVR, etc.)
  
• energy management, e.g., dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS)
  
• non-intrusive execution tracing
  
• advanced performance analysis and visualisation
  
• performance simulations.
  

Benefits

• low-resource software
  
• energy efficient platforms
  
• enhanced system performance
  
• comprehensible visualisations.