Corporate candidates in IPC technology

Expected data point is that the average salary of an employee gradually increases with the number of people reporting to him or her. With no direct reports, the average salary is $102,170. The average salary increases to more than $200,000 when the number of reports exceeds 500 people.

If you look around your office or attend any industry events, you will notice the sheer lack of females in the automation profession. This year the percentage of female respondents crept up slightly from 5.1% last year to 6.3%. Along with that gender gap comes a salary gap of about $11,283. The average salary for a male is $107,487, while the average salary for a female is $96,204.

If you look around your office or attend any embedded computer events, you will notice the sheer lack of females in the automation profession. This year the percentage of female respondents crept up slightly from 5.1% last year to 6.3%. Along with that gender gap comes a salary gap of about $11,283. The average salary for a male is $107,487, while the average salary for a female is $96,204.

There is a message here for employers. If you are paying less than the industry average, you could very likely lose your engineers. Based on data from industrial auto machines, a recruiting and contract staffing company based in Minnesota, there is a high demand for automation professionals, and high-quality candidates are hard to find. When companies do find good candidates, the candidates typically have multiple offers on the table. If your company employs high-quality professionals, pay them well, or you may lose them.

refer to: http://www.automation.com/factors-that-affect-your-salary-what-you-need-to-know

BIST for building ISO on-chip safety

Logic & Memory BIST
Functional safety standards for automotive chips like ASIL (Automotive Safety Integrity Level) recommend BIST (Built-In Self-Test) to be part of a chip. Before transitioning to functional mode, it goes through logic and memory-BIST to assure that the chip has not encountered any manufacturing or aging faults. Chips can implement BIST for critical modules like hardware monitors to detect any dormant faults. Chips can even implement a controller to control and manage the BIST operations.


Redundant critical on-chip modules like processor, ISO, DMA controller, internal clock generator, and communications peripherals can improve reliability should a primary hardware module become non-functional while the vehicle is running. Such a system can have in-built error detection mechanisms and on-the-fly switching to redundant hardware to mitigate threats to passenger safety.
But this kind of redundant hardware architecture comes with the penalty of increased area and higher power management in silicon. Area penalties can be minimized by intelligent selection of which functions need to be duplicated in silicon. Power can be minimized by adopting power and clock gating in the redundant modules. Some  in-vehicle computers can be implemented in lock-step of each other, where primary and redundant modules process the same input. Mismatch in the output of the lock-step modules indicates a defect in either of the modules. The system can switch itself off or take appropriate safety measures to avoid any real-time failure. Redundant hardware should be placed quite far in silicon from the primary embedded systems to avoid tampering of both modules together.

refer to: http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4421704/Safety---security-architecture-for-automotive-ICs

Leveraging IT Technology for industrial applications

With that said, the solutions is going to be moving with an industry that has a definite consumer bias, with product development and release embedded systems of six months or less. In an industry where the average life expectancy of an automotive production line is eight years, it is impossible to expect the networks in an industrial setting to keep up with modern IT standards. Therefore, we turn our attention to the technologies that have existed the longest, with the most open standards and the very best support. These are the protocols we wish to use and keep, and this article highlights and explains some of these technologies.
This article does not focus on the technical implementations of each piece of technology. Rather, it is assumed the reader will be using packaged solutions such as a function block for a PLC. These packages typically require only that the user specifies the relevant server to connect to, the data to be gathered and an activation bit. The particulars of each protocol and concept are, ideally, transparent to the user, and therefore it is not pressing that the user understands what is contained in each packet passed between the server and the client. As each protocol described in this article is openly documented and supported, a simple search on the Internet for the technical details will likely yield the relevant implementation details.

refer to: http://www.automation.com/leveraging-it-technology-for-industrial-controls-applications

Combination for visual displays and your embedded system

Visual displays

To keep up with the increasing sophistication of factory equipment, Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) need to deliver sophisticated 2D and 3D graphics, video, and other embedded systems types that clearly communicate a machine’s status and intended operation. Advanced visuals are also important in central control rooms, where management needs to understand increasingly complex of embedded systems and distributed Internet of Things-enabled systems at a glance.

Performance is critical in solutions Things-enabled factories, as it enables greater analysis of product quality, equipment performance, and other factors. Overall performance is up 15 percent in the new processors, while signal and image fanless embedded systems get an additional 2x boost with Intel Advanced Vector Extensions

refer to:

http://embedded-computing.com/articles/transform-factory-the-intel-core-processor/

Female leaders in the embedded industry

In the next 5 to 10 years, which technologies will present the most viable development opportunities for your organization and for the embedded computer industry?

MITCHELL: The ever-expanding Internet of Things will continue to drive embedded development – specifically distributed tech. Back in the days of mainframe terminal controllers, we all shared resources to keep availability up and costs down. When PCs entered the market, everyone got their own resources, and it was all about owning bigger hard drives and more RAM. Now, we are moving toward everyone having thin clients and sharing resources again. It’s all about mobility and always-on availability. This distributed evolution will drive opportunity for Altera and for embedded, in both infrastructure and end-user embedded computer equipment.

Another factor is consumer trends. As an example: 3D printing is really hot right now. It brings robotics and automation to the people – makes it affordable and available just like PCs did for computing in the early ’80s. Robotic technology helps with science, like medicine and mechanics, and also with art, productivity, and efficiency. As engineers, we should keep our eyes open for anything that melds the analog and digital, the human-machine interface that bridges organic and inorganic.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/2013-influential-engineering-altera-corporation/

How to manage embedded system's peripherals?

The basic functions of an operating system are to manage the system’s peripherals and schedule software tasks to ensure that each program gets some processor time. A file system is also part of a standard OS to store software modules and boot instructions. Another big benefit of an embedded computer is to provide networking software and drivers for common hardware peripherals, eliminating constant reinvention. However, an embedded OS is quite different from its desktop counterpart. Desktop systems assume a keyboard, a mouse, a display, a hard disk, and plenty of memory. However, there is no such standardization in embedded products. One embedded system might have no hard disk and limited memory while another has no user I/O at all. An embedded OS must also be modular, allowing components to be added or removed to adjust the memory footprint such as is possible with the Neutrino real-time OS from QNX (see Figure 1). Before settling on an OS, designers should understand scheduling algorithms, memory requirements, latencies, tool support, and pricing models.

refer to:http://embedded-computing.com/articles/choose-right-embedded-operating-system/

Remote control for the embedded system

Identity and access management at the application are finally getting the attention that they deserve, but they are not new embedded computer concepts. With a growing importance on stronger authentication, cloud providers need to increase the number of authentication factors they consider. The typical two-factor authentication approach – typically a Common Access Card (CAC) in embedded computer – is not enough; they need to add additional factors based on the risk associated with certain data. We are focusing on ‘fine-grained entitlements’ in applications and how to secure everything with a lot of fidelity at the application level and data level. This also includes new approaches and technologies to securing data at rest.”

refer to: http://mil-embedded.com/articles/cloud-security-the-dod/