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"Device-software optimization": say what?
April 27, 2006

Maury Wright, editor in chief of sibling publication EDN, hoped to get a clear definition of "device software optimization" (DSO) at the recently held Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA. He hoped panelists John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at Wind River Systems; Karl-Gustav Niska, VP of marketing at Enea; and Dave Kleidermacher, VP of engineering at Green Hills Software would enlighten him.

He reports that he came away disappointed: "After five minutes, I felt better about the fact that I hadn't been able to grasp the DSO concept because it became painfully obvious that the presumed leaders of the DSO movement weren't even talking about the same concepts when describing DSO."

The ultimate goal, Wright suggests, is to abstract application development from the hardware. But he points out that in embedded-system designs, "special-purpose hardware is often the key to value-added software. So in the embedded-system world, I question the entire concept of abstraction beyond the layer that handles files systems, network support, and other generic features."

Concludes Wright, "I asked several board and chip vendors about their take on DSO. Mostly, I got blank stares. One vendor that asked to remain anonymous said, 'At best, it sounds like an apology for writing crappy software in the past.' I can't come up with a better description."

Posted by Rick Nelson on April 27, 2006 | Comments (0)