TRENDS IN TECHNOLOGY

An increasing number of chip manufacturers supply so called "system on a chip solutions". Driven by the proliferation of Se Top boxes, PDA's, Cell Phones and other devices a large variety of these solutions are becoming available. The various forms are either Fixed-, FPGA- or ASIC-based. Other variations are processor speed and interfacing. Suppliers include Intel with XScale, National Semiconductor with Geode, Motorola with PowerPC solutions, NetSilicon, Hitachi/STMicroelectronics with SuperSH, ATI Technologies with Xilleon 220, NEC, Altera, Xilinx, Quicklogic.

Solutions arising from FPGA manufacturers such as Altera, Xilinx, Quicklogic may have on board a hard coded processor core in addition to a FPGA. This FPGA technology allows the design of a "system on a chip" solution in small quantities.

Memory Management Unit based development allows to separate the designing of the software from that of the hardware. Traditionally without an MMU, any application has direct access to every part of the physical memory. Neither the kernel nor applications are protected nor is there abstraction from the hardware. An MMU erects a wall between application and kernel and between applications and keeps an errant process under control. These facts enhance quality and drastically diminishes time to market for your product. Prices of MMU-based processors have dropped considerably and in many cases are no longer a limiting costing factor.

When a graphical user interface is needed one has to decide whether a dedicated application should be designed and coded or a HTML/XML approach with a webserver is more appropriate. Decisions should be based on:

1. Development time,
2. Cost considerations,
3. The possibility that anybody can adapt HTML based interfaces and
4. The fact that a HTML/XML based approach allows you to use the interface on almost every available machine, from telephone to a large computer.

Functional limitations that remain in terms of dedication or speed may not be relevant in particular applications.

If you require your software development to be independent of specific persons and you feel you need much better control of the whole software development process, we can assist in advising you about the possibilities of case tools.

UPnP defines common protocols and procedures to guarantee interoperability among network-enabled PC's, appliances and wireless devices. The protocols used are: TCP/IP, XML, HTTP, HTTPMU, HTTPU, SOAP,GENA and SSDP. Devices that are connected on a network are automatically discovered to enable communication. As UPnP uses open standards it stands a good change to become a generally accepted communication mechanism for machines and computers on a network.