Inside the Solar Car: How to go 3000km on 1kW

Presenters:
Sam D'Amico, Stanford Undergraduate, majoring in Electrical Engineering
Gregory Hall, Stanford Undergraduate, majoring in Computer Science

Time: 11:15am - 12:15pm EST

Founded in 1989, the Stanford Solar Car Project is an entirely student-run, non-profit organization fueled by its members' passion for engineering and extreme efficiency. We provide a unique opportunity for undergraduates to gain valuable hands-on engineering and business experience while raising community awareness of electric vehicles. The team operates on a two-year design and build cycle.

In 2011, the team competed in the World Solar Challenge, a 3,000km solar vehicle race across the Australian Outback. The keynote will offer a design overview of the technology of the Stanford entry, Xenith, elaborate on trade-offs considered during the design of the car, and share highlights from the 2011 race.

Developing High-Quality Consumer Audio Devices Using a Cortex-M4 MCU

Speaker: John Knab, STMicroelectronics

Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm EST

The latest consumer audio devices demand flexibility and performance to support audio playback from a wide variety of sources that can include internet radio, external USB devices or SD Cards. This session will look at how a high performance 168 MHz Cortex-M4 MCU can be used to decode and synchronize audio playback to achieve the very highest quality. The presenter will show how this Cortex-M4 MCU with an advanced audio architecture and industry standard interfaces that include Ethernet, two USB OTGs and two full duplex I2S can be utilized to provide the flexibility and audio fidelity for the most demanding consumer audio applications. The session will also look at audio performance analysis and examine the loading of the Cortex-M4 core and ART Memory Accelerator.

Advanced Development Tools: Are We Ready for New Languages and Models?

Speakers:
Jean Labrosse, Founder, CEO and President, Micrium
Reinhardt Keil, Director of MCU Tools, ARM
Nadim Shehayed, Managing Director of IAR Systems Americas, IAR Systems
Sean Newton, STMicroelectronics
Wolfgang Schmitt, Hitex Development Tools

Moderator: Jim Turley, Principal Analyst, Silicon Insider

Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm EST

Assembly language is dead; long live the C compiler. Do modern programming tools make us more productive, or have we just forgotten how to compress code and maximize performance by hand-tweaking each line of assembly code? Hear the experts debate the pros and cons of modern programming practice.

New software platforms speed development of leading-edge embedded applications

Speakers:
Régis Latawiec, Sales Director, IS2T
Gérard Bouvet, Sales Director, GeeseWare

Time: 2:30pm - 3:30pm EST

Embedded applications are increasingly requiring higher performance MCUs to support market demands such as user's friendly HMI's, multimedia, global connectivity, data production and sharing. In addition, the complexity of these new applications is increased by time-to-market and fast product derivations requirements.

To address these challenges, we will discuss the use of proven application design strategies based on Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and application virtual platform to reach the highest software productivity while keeping BOM costs optimized.

Starting from embedded system value chain analysis, we will explore:

• Virtual application platforms for specific MCU (Java Virtual Machines).
• Low level & legacy C code integration.
• HMI design use case: life-cycle, stakeholders and tools with specific focus on graphical displays (multiple, on-board, remote over the Internet).
• Fast time-to-market process: software capitalization, testing activities, Agile design process for embedded systems.

Digital Signal-Processing on an MCU

Speakers:
Jeff Bier, Independent Industry Analyst, Founder and President, BDTI
Reinhardt Keil, Director of MCU Tools, ARM
Paul Beckman, CEO/CTO, DSP Concepts, LLC
Bob Waskiewizc, STMicroelectronics

Moderator: Rick Merritt, Editor-at-large, EE Times

Time: 3:30pm - 4:30pm EST

DSPs and MCUs used to be two different things. Even now, signal processing is alien to most programmers, yet they know they need it for modern embedded applications. See how combining these two architectures into one device makes programming easier while also reducing hardware footprints and materials costs.

Designing Portable Medical Devices Using an Ultra-Low-Power Cortex-M MCU

Speakers: James Lombard, STMicroelectronics

Time: 4:30pm - 5:30pm EST

Changes in lifestyle and demographics are creating the requirement for new portable healthcare and medical devices that can monitor, diagnose and remotely communicate to the healthcare provider. These portable devices can both improve the wellbeing and lifestyle of the patient and also dramatically reduce the cost to the healthcare provider. A typical portable medical device will consist of advanced analog functions for sensors and a high performance MCU for running algorithms and communication. This session will look at how to develop portable medical devices using an ultra-low-power Cortex-M MCU with integrated advanced analog functions. The presenter will show how to manage the apparently contradictory requirements of high-performance and long battery life by using a range of energy efficient ultra-low-power run and standby modes and utilizing advanced analog and digital peripherals that can operate while the MCU is in ultra- low-power standby modes.