Back in the mid 1960’s American Airlines ran a very successful ad program (the ad was “Take me along if you Love me”) in which business travelers were allowed to bring their wives along on their business trip – at no additional cost.

Thousands of business travelers took advantage of the offer and sales soared. Leave it to some marketing moron to contact the traveling “wives” and ask them how they enjoyed their trip. Seems that many of the “take me alongers” were not the wives but someone else.

Hundreds of divorces ensued and the airline was sued by many and sales took a turn for the worse.

Fast forward to 2011 and it seems that the grandsons/granddaughters of those hapless AA marketing mavens might now be working for Freescale.

Freescale is giving away free the MQX operating system – but is Freescale helping or handicapping their customers?

In a recent EMF survey of 660 embedded developers, we were able to compare design outcomes among all of the major operating systems (using our unique Dashboard tool – see video).

Citing just a few highlights,

	ThreadX	Micrium	VxWorks	MQX
Time from design start to shipment (months)	10.5	11.3	16.3	15.8
Percent of Designs completed Behind Schedule	29.8%	40.0%	51.1%	56.6%

 

So we are left wondering whether Freescale realizes what they are doing to their customers – and whether the grandsons/granddaughters of American Airlines marketers can find a place where their efforts can’t do any more harm. The Obama administration comes to mind.

 

Considerable attention and speculation has been given to the use of COTS hardware across different vertical markets, and whether this trend is expanding, remaining stable or declining. If the use of COTS is expanding, one would expect to see an economic benefit to its use – hence, a more important measure of COTS utilization would be reflected in the budgeted amount of COTS hardware as a percentage of total hardware cost.

In a recent 2011 survey of embedded developers (653 respondents), EMF asked respondents to report the percent of their total hardware budget that was devoted to COTS hardware.

Table I presents their responses according to vertical market. Whereas Aerospace/Avionics and Military had the highest response (these data reflect the percent of the COTS hardware budget compared with total hardware budget) Datacom and Electronic Instrumentation had a better than average response.

Percent of Hardware Budget Devoted to COTS Hardware
2011 EMF Survey of Embedded Developers
Industry Average	23%
Auto-Transportation	19%
Aerospace-Avionics	30%
Consumer Electronics	22%
Datacom-Networking	27%
Electronic Instrumentation	24%
Industrial Automation	20%
Medical	20%
Military	32%
Office Automation	14%
Telecom	23%

                   Table I

Table II presents developer responses according to chip architecture.

It is interesting to note that the budgeted percent of COTS hardware is consistent across all architectures, DSP and FPGA, but it is significantly larger for dual core and multi core developments. This might be due to the recent inclusion of multiple cores in embedded developments where the focus might be on software development within a mostly reusable hardware configuration. It will be interesting to see if this data is repeated in 2012.

 

 

Percent of Hardware Budget Devoted to COTS Hardware
2011 EMF Survey of Embedded Developers
Industry Average	23%
8-bit	21%
16-bit	22%
32-bit	24%
64-bit	23%
128-bit	26%
DSP	23%
FPGA	21%
Dual Core	28%
Multi-Core	35%

                             Table II

Information regarding the survey and data can be found at

www.embeddedforecast.com.

Survey data and the use of the EMF Embedded Dashboard used to compute these data can be seen at:

http://www.embeddedforecast.com/emfmip_videos.php

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut – Warren Buffet

The giggles keep coming – Atego has purchased another company (albeit a competent one – notwithstanding a questionable fit). This time it was Hi Rely, a service company that actually knows what its doing – although at a premium price.

I guess that in Jay Gambrel’s “Alice in Wonderland” dreams he believes that he’s going to match IBM’s 35,000 person service capabilities. Jay once told me that he’s a banker and that he doesn’t have to understand how the embedded world works.

I’ve known Vance Hildebrand for a long time – and I have previously recommended him and his organization. At least Hi Rely offers a useful service and has good people – good offerings and good people, however, do not necessarily create a positive and revenue producing combination. Time will tell.

Knowing Vance as a friend and colleague, I asked him why he sold to Atego – going in my mind from Upper East Side to downtown Newark. I asked if  a) he’s in trouble with his bookie, or, b) grandma needed implants to get her job back at Hooters. For the record, Vance loved my email to him and told me that he passed wine through his nose while laughing so hard. He offered to explain his willingness to be bought out by Atego after the May ESC conference. Vance has not responded to my emails since the wine-nose incident and we are on the lookout for a much too happy guy. Vance was paid in dollars (or Euros) and not in Atego stock – I told you that he is competent.

So Jay, please tell us who these more than generous VC folks are so that companies with good prospects and poor financial positions can gain access.

Jay, as a gesture of good will from this side of the puddle – and hoping that I can throw a bone to your financial backers, I’d like to introduce you to Gregg Miller of Oak Grove, Missouri.

So let me posit the following question: What differentiates the Atego acquisition strategy from Mr. Miller’s business? The answer is that neither seem to make sense – BUT Mr. Miller has made $20 million with his product he calls “Neuticles”.

Mr. Miller felt strongly that post-neutered dogs were too ashamed to show their face (or southern exposure) to other dogs, so he created fake testicles (Neuticles) that he sells for $100 a pair (not including surgery). To date he has sold over 250,000 Neuticles. Truth be told, I have a distant cousin who had Pekinese-sized Neuticles implanted in her Great Dane (we suspect nothing sinister) . The dog probably had emotional problem to begin with.

I guess that Neuticles is an easier sell than realtime Java

So Jay, don’t give up – if Mr. Miller can find gold with his “not of this planet” inspiration, so can you. Rumor has it that there is an embedded Unix company for sale.

Surveys of embedded developers to establish market parameters regarding RTOS use must be careful to avoid unintentional bias. 

I have recently been contacted by senior executives from RTOS companies mentioning UBM’s survey of embedded developers that placed FreeRTOS as the most used RTOS for embedded use in 2011 (14% of respondents). FreeRTOS placed 3^rd in the 2010 UBM survey. Year-over-year EMF data is at substantial odds with these findings.

EMF takes no position on how UBM conducts their survey or on their results. EMF data for the past two years have shown that FreeRTOS usage has garnered less than 1% of total developer responses. This encompasses over 1200 responding developers. This is a significantly lower response than the 14% reported by UBM. EMF has no idea of how this discrepancy came about. We stand by our data as our surveys and responses are restricted and carefully monitored. We make no judgment regarding UBM’s methods or results. We are responding to requests to report our findings.

In EMF’s 2011 Annual Survey of Embedded Developers, eleven thousand embedded developers were statistically selected and sent invitations to participate in the 2011 survey. Six hundred and fifty three developers responded to our invitation. PIN numbers were assigned to each request so that we could insure that only those invited participated in the survey – and that they could respond only once.

In 2011 developers reported using an in-house RTOS (20.1%), Android (19.3%), XPE (16.5%) and CE (15.9%). FreeRTOS was used by 0.9% of respondents. From our perspective, the suggestion that FreeRTOS use would exceed that of in-house, Android, XPE, CE, or VxWorks use is beyond any reasonable reality check.

Ignoring important business information in order to save money is like saving up sex for your old age. Warren Buffet

An archeologist was searching along the Amazon River when he stumbled onto a tribe of warriors. They were both shocked and surprised to see each other. The archeologist cried out “Lord, please save me for I am totally screwed”. A black cloud appeared and a loud voice cried out “you are not screwed – pick up the rock in front of you and kill the chief”. He picked up the rock and threw it hitting the chief in the head killing him instantly. The archeologist looked up to see 40 tribesmen coming at him with their spears aimed at him. He looked to the cloud and a loud voice said …

“OK – NOW you’re screwed”

Sometimes market advice seems to work that way.

A decade ago the merchant computer board industry was abuzz with CompactPCI (cPCI) forecast to replace the VME Bus. Market analysts were calling cPCI the two-billion dollar marketplace. Given that cPCI was controlled by three vendors (by definition a commodity marketplace), we called it the “zero-billion dollar marketplace”. Advocates told me that I was looking at the tip of the iceberg. I said that we were looking at the tip of the ice-cube!

The outcome was a no-brainer. commodity markets don’t grow as strong and as large as polyopoly markets (those that support a broad range of vendors). In addition, virtually every cPCI design was custom – not off the shelf. So who won? Not us – we were correct in our analysis, but no one bought our research. Other market research firms made a lot of money selling what vendors wanted to hear – but those vendors (Force Computer and Motorola Computer Group, among others) are long gone.

We never regretted our strategy – although we didn’t make any money in having the correct analysis. Ten years later, we are still here and doing fine.

 

The EMF Approach to Comprehensive and Reliable Market Intelligence

EMF’s Market Intelligence Program involves three steps

• A comprehensive and statistically accurate survey statistically derived to insure randomness
• An initial series of cross-tabs to provide an overview of the survey results
• And an interactive Dashboard that enables you to explore the data set to  determine relationships in the data that can be essential to one’s efforts

No survey is adequate unless the data can be interrogated from a multitude of perspectives to establish relationships and correlations. EMF does this using a unique tool we call the Executive Dashboard.

 

A well constructed survey and the use of the Dashboard can provide the following:

 

• Determine comparisons between your competitor’s products and yours

• Determine developer metrics: number of developers per project; number of lines of written code as well as total lines of code; cancellations; designs completed ahead of or behind schedule – and how many months behind schedule; and, comparisons between pre-design expectations and final design results – and be able to do this for any vertical market, any chip architecture used, etc.

• One can look at developers’ most pressing concerns, what design processes are used and what developers believe are best practice

• Look at product line deficiencies and needs

• Look at what developers are planning to use and do

• Degree of satisfaction of customers with products and tools

• Find market messages that resonate with potential customers, and keep products aligned with these benefits

We have put together a series of videos to illustrate how our surveys are constructed and how the dashboard is used. We encourage you the reader and embedded professional to think about how you evaluate information that is critical to your success.

You don’t want that black cloud telling you that “now you’re screwed”. The only thing worse would be if you had paid for that information.

 

This is not an April Fool’s joke. The fresh snow on my Massachusetts lawn and driveway was our unexpected April Fool’s joke. If you responded to our request of our reader’s to take the same survey as did our embedded industry respondents, be proud and go ahed and ask your boss for  raise.

We recently posted a Blog comparing EMF Blog readers with their industry counterparts regarding how they stay knowledgeable about embedded products and services. There was, as might be expected, a substantial difference between the two groups. Our Blog readers were far more aggressive is gaining information than their counterparts.

In that Blog we posited the question whether such professional conduct would provide better and more cost efficient design outcomes.

For the past 15 years, EMF has conducted detailed and extensive surveys of embedded developers. Using the EMF Executive Dashboard (a data analysis tool unique to the embedded market intelligence community) we have been able to relate the decisions of embedded developers to their design outcomes. This also enables us to develop ROI and total cost of development calculations to establish the most cost effective of the many possible design undertakings. Our readers and downloaders of our many white papers are familiar with our results.

In our 2011 EMF Survey of Embedded Developers, we asked our readers to take the same survey as that of the statistically accurate industry wide survey. It has been an assumption/theory of mine that embedded professionals that take the time to research and read authentic market intelligence would produce better and more cost effective design outcomes.

We have examined this comparative data and we present it in Table I.

		Ind ave	EMF Bloggers
	Devel time Months – Start to Ship	13.9	12.5
	% behind schedule	47.0%	38.1%
	Months behind	3.8	3.8
	% cancelled	11.2%	10.9%
	Months before cancellation	4.4	3.7
	SW Developers/project	14.7	9.7
	Total Developers/project	14.7	9.7
	Average Developer months/project	204.3	121.3
	Developer months lost to schedule	26.3	14.0
	Developer months lost to cancellation	7.2	3.9
	Total developer months/ project	237.8	139.2
	At $10,000/developer month
	Average developer cost/project	$2,043,300	$1,212,500
	Average cost to delay	$262,542	$140,437
	Total developer cost/project	$2,305,842	$1,352,937
	Advantage		70.4%

 

                                                    Table I

It is clear from Table I that the EMF Blog readers (that took the time to complete the survey – congratulate yourself if you did and show this to your boss) experienced substantially lower design costs that that of their industry counterparts. One might assume that professionals that take the time to keep current with embedded information would experience better results.

Judge for yourself.

Survey respondents were asked “How close was your final design outcome to your pre-design expectation?” The choices made available were: within 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% and not within 50%. EMF believes that design outcomes within 30% represent a good design outcome – and within 20% represent an excellent design outcome. Table II presents the comparison between the groups.

		Ind Ave	EMF Bloggers
	Performance	67.5%	67.8%
	Systems Functionality	70.6%	71.4%

                                              Table II

There is no difference between the groups. What we might deduce from Tables I and II is that although the design choices by our Blog readers were enlightened enough to produce a significant savings in design costs, their ultimate design outcomes were comparable. Of course, the pre-design expectation of the Blog readers might have been higher that that of the industry at large. This is pure speculation – the data does not support the assumption.

Nevertheless, if I was the CEO I’d go for the significant savings.

 

Comparing EMF Blog Reader’s Responses with Those of the Embedded Industry

 

There is an old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” As the pace of technology change continues to accelerate (did anyone consider the ascendancy of Linux in the past or Android today?) the plight of many embedded developers and managers (not to mention cost controlling CFOs) – many facing limited windows of opportunity – makes choosing among the best alternatives very difficult.

 

For the past 15 years, EMF  has conducted detailed and extensive surveys of embedded developers. Using the EMF Executive Dashboard (a data analysis tool unique to the embedded market intelligence community) we have been able to relate the decisions of embedded developers to their design outcomes. This also enables us to develop ROI and total cost of development calculations to establish the most cost effective of the many possible design undertakings. Our readers and downloaders of our many white papers are familiar with our results.

 

In our 2011 EMF Survey of Embedded Developers, we asked our readers to take the same survey as that of the statistically accurate industry wide survey. It has been an assumption/theory of mine that embedded professionals that take the time to research and read authentic market intelligence would produce better and more cost effective design outcomes.

 

We are currently examining this comparative data and we will report on our analysis in a later blog or white paper. The first step, however, was to look at whether there was a difference in how our readers stay knowledgeable as compared with developers in the industry at large.

 

Comparative responses to the question “How do you typically first become aware of and stay knowledgeable about embedded products and services?” is presented in Table I.

  Read the rest of this entry »

 

When we look at embedded developer’s issues - what they are doing, what issues are the most disconcerting to them in their embedded developments, and what we can take from changes that we have seen over the past several years - these stand out as emerging trends in an expanding embedded marketplace.

 

In summary:

 

• There has been a shift in the RTOS marketplace from the traditionally powerful RTOSes (e.g., Integrity, VxWorks and LynxOS) to the smaller, highly efficient RTOSes (e.g., ThreadX, Micrium, Nucleus and MontaVista Linux).

 

• Simulation-Modeling (e.g., Simulink, Rhapsody) tools are being used effectively in more designs, driven by code reuse, reporting of application software under conditions of changing of underlying hardware, and by the financial advantages that accrue.

 

• Communication middleware use is changing from RYO to commercially available middleware (e.g., RTI) as the difficulties (and cost of maintenance) of network expansion proved unmanageable.

 

• The use of testing tools is expanding in embedded applications including requirements and change management, validation and verification tools and static and dynamic testing. Companies such as LDRA are successfully integrating many of these tools into a single offering that is interoperable with DOORS and Rhapsody. EMF believes that integration with other tools sets – rather than stand alone tools – is the future.

 

• The use of dual core and multicore processors for embedded designs is growing rapidly – notwithstanding the lack of excellent tools (particularly for symmetric multiprocessing). This need will create a new and substantial addition to the development tools marketplace.

 

It will be fascinating to analyze the results from the 2011 EMF Survey of Embedded Developers to see which trends continue, what markets appear to be in decline and whether new and important market insights appear.

 

As always, we welcome your comments and insights (jerry@embeddedforecast.com)

Happy New Year to our readers

Jerry & Dolores Krasner

 

Announcing our first webinar of 2011 with The MathWorks All are welcome and will receive a complimentary copy of our report.

 

The landing pages for our webinar on Jan. 12^th  2011 are now “live” on the website and collecting registrations:

 

9:00am session: http://www.mathworks.com/company/events/webinars/wbnr53412.html?seq=1

 

2:00pm session: http://www.mathworks.com/company/events/webinars/wbnr53412.html?seq=2

 

EMF has recently published a detailed analysis of the Mobile Device Industry focusing on best practices and ROI analysis. This paper is available for free download from our website.

 

  Overview: It’s not easy being a mobile device manufacturer today

 

 Profound economic conditions spawn profound opportunities and challenges. As in any economic contest, there will be winners, losers and those that can’t tell the difference. Market uncertainties challenge vendors and OEMs alike to find new niches, competitive advantages and markets that will remain stable while enjoying growth potential.

 

For example, the FCC has recently adopted a regulation that could dramatically improve our wireless devices. The rule offers a brand new and much-improved slice of the radio space for unlicensed use. The new frequencies are known as “white spaces” and result from making available to the public the frequency spectrum previously used by analog TV transmissions. This spectrum will enable greatly enhanced WiFi capabilities which will provide for mile-long connectivity as well as increased and more reliable data handling capabilities. One can imagine the many new and powerful apps that will emerge – most of which will require reusing developed code.

 

EMF believes that this will both increase opportunities as well as risk for mobile device manufacturers. EMF strongly believes that the issues we present in this report are essential to those manufacturers that will dominate this emerging market opportunity. Merely maintaining a growing position in the current expanding marketplace will not be competitively sufficient.

 

As processor costs continue their downward spiral, and as fickle consumers of mobile technologies are increasingly ready to move to more interesting and useful displays and functionalities, consumer-based markets are becoming characteristically disposable. New platforms appear nearly monthly – like quantum particles appearing and disappearing into the void of consumer insanity – characterized by more functional and entertaining GUIs that enable the technologically disadvantaged to easily link to social sites, read email, text and perform acts of information magic that would have made Merlin give up his wand.

 

Points of Pain: issues that mobile device manufacturers must consider to remain competitive

  Read the rest of this entry »