Tech Focus: Embedded firmware tips and resources

Firmware coding requires constant (re-)education

Firmware developer's essential reading list

Firmware architecture in five easy steps

What a firmware curriculum would look like

Insights

Firmware coding requires constant (re-)education

Bernard Cole

For developers who want to keep their C-programming and firmware skills sharp, there are numerous resources available on Embedded.com and at conferences such as the 2013 Spring ESC DESIGN West.

Firmware developer's essential reading list

Jack Ganssle

Plenty of great sources exist for information on firmware design. Here are some of the best.

Firmware basics for the boss

Jack Ganssle

If your boss understands the beast that is firmware development, your team can be more productive. Here's what the boss needs to know.

Firmware forensics: best practices in embedded software source-code discovery

Michael Barr

Remember unintended acceleration? Here's what NASA should have examined in Toyota's software.

Development

Firmware architecture in five easy steps

Here are five essential tips for taking your successful older code and dropping it into new firmware.

Developing a flexible firmware architecture

Firmware modularization is the ticket to low cost and (relatively) painless product development.

A new way to do firmware development on programmable devices

In this Product How-To article Mark Saunders describes a new methodology for doing firmware development for the Cypress' Arm-based Programmable SoCs, using the company's PSoC Creator in combination with Arm's uVision IDE.

Debugging software/firmware using trace function re-usable components

How to use functional trace logging for effective firmware/software debugging of embedded systems under dynamic conditions and how to reduce the need to fix defects or anomalies after-the-fact, using emulators/simulators.

Products

LDRArules programming rule checker assures standards compliance

LDRArules is a programming rule checker that brings together a collection of rules from a broad spectrum of programming standards.

LDRAcover verifies test coverage to meet stringent safety and security levels

LDRAcover is a stand-alone code coverage tool that verifies the source code of an application has been fully structurally tested.

GrammaTech CodeSonar 3.8 does source-code analysis up to six times faster with lower false positive rate

CodeSonar 3.8 is significantly faster and more precise than its predecessor, with fewer false positives, making it much easier to analyze projects with millions of lines of code.