IMEC needs your help

4/7/2009 8:28 AM EDT

I had a chance to sit (well, make that stand) with Maja D'Hondt at ESC last week. She's manager of the MPSoC Runtime Nomadic Embedded Systems team and filled me on the premise of the research.

It boils down to the fact that far too much effort and resources are being put into the overdesign of systems to account for the increasingly dynamic, networked and unpredictable environments in which systems for multimedia, servers and mobile devices have to operate. For more on the launch of the program, click here.

The net effect is that the systems have to support unpredictable interaction with users or with the environment, while also being able to work with widely varying input data, downloadable software, online services, and a wider range of software applications than is traditionally supported by embedded systems.

The new program will focus on moving the management of the system's resources from the design phase to runtime software solutions. "We're working on ways to improve the runtime efficiency of these heterogeneous, distributed systems," said D'Hondt. That'll mean improving the communication between processors, better resource allocation on the fly, runtime compilation and more efficient use of the various processing elements within a system.

The end result will be shorter time to market, lower cost and more efficient systems.

Any and all suggestions on how this can be achieved or on how to collaborate with the team can be sent to D'Hondt directly at maja.dhondt@imec.be.

Watch this space for more information on the program as it develops, including video updates on progress.