Embedded Systems Weekly #121

This week I started to work on a directory of embedded systems companies. It is 100% free and public. It is as well reserved for companies with less than 50 people and with more than 20% of people dedicated to embedded systems. I planned to work on the directory during the next 4 weeks and to release it beginning of November.

if you want me to add your company, please, send a hello email to embedsys@embedsysweekly.com, and I'll reply to you with less than 10 questions.

Happy reading!

Articles

Linux kernel 6.0: Merge of the runtime verification subsystem
With the runtime verification subsystem it is possible to create a high-level model of states and transitions that the kernel can be in or can take. Based on this model, the verification code checks at runtime that the kernel behaves like it is described in the model. It is a terrific addition for embedded systems coming from the kernel realtime project. To help us, they delivered as well the wip (wakeup in preemptive) monitor example.

A tiny VU lander
Mohit Bhoite is the famous creator of tiny sculpture made of electronic components. In issue 89, he lets us use one of his pictures. In this new article, he shares the schematics and the code of his VU meter sculpture based on the ATTiny85. It could be a fun project for your weekends.

A lesson from the past: building real-time systems is hard
A retrospective of the Pathfinder bug that was causing its system resets. It is a classical priority inversion problem on the VxWorks RTOS.

Posits, a New Kind of Number, Improves the Math of AI
This new representation of floating numbers is indeed better for applications using normalized numbers (between -1 and 1). Exactly the kind of float used in the deep learning field.

Announcing Rust 1.64.0: C-compatible FFI types in core and alloc
This release announcement of Rust deserves its place in Embedsys Weekly because it's a major milestone for the adoption of Rust for bare metal developments. Now The interoperability is a lot better because Rust code can directly use type aliases to match the corresponding types from C on any target, and without the standard library.

Education / Community

All About Electronic Circuits for Kids
It has been sent to me by a member of a STEM club for girls based in the USA. I strongly believe that kids should be introduced to electronics as soon as possible. This page could help teachers to find the right angle for that.

Jobs

Norik Systems, Embedded Software Engineer, Full-time, Maribor, Slovenia, EU
Norik Systems provide software engineering services for diverse industry sectors, including automotive, air traffic control, logistics and sports.

Misc

How, Exactly, Did NASA Smash Its DART Spacecraft Into an Asteroid?
What are the three main components that made the mission possible? The DRACO, the SMART nav and the ROSA. Put like this, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I promise the article is doing a great job to explain their role.