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More Than Just the iPhone


Embedded, mobile spaces starting to favor Linux, virtualization

By P. J. Connolly
December 26, 2007 — 
Looking at the world of embedded and mobile devices from the outside, one could be forgiven for thinking that the year 2007 was sponsored by the letters G and I. After all, between the hype over Apple Computer’s iPhone—which started at the January Macworld Expo and has only now begun to quiet down—and the frantic baying of the media hounds over what we all thought was going to be the Gphone, it’s been a full year of handsets that became bigger stars than the spokesmodels.

Granted, the iPhone’s global presence is more sizzle than steak, with worldwide rollouts continuing into next year and an SDK slated for 2008 that could very well ensure the platform’s usefulness for business users as well as music and video lovers. Meanwhile, the Open Handset Alliance—which is pushing the Android platform that the rumored Google phone turned out to be—is just getting started and expects to deliver the first version of its platform next year.

But those superstars represent just the tip of the iceberg for embedded and mobile developers. The year 2007 saw Eclipse become the development platform of choice for an increasing number of coders, as vendors realized the strengths of the open source tool set. Multicore hardware began presenting embedded developers with challenges that their colleagues developing for big iron have faced for years.

Virtualization was hot in every other aspect of IT in 2007, and it was no surprise that it’s being adopted for embedded development as well. XenSource’s September announcement of a virtualization platform for OEMs may herald the day when most mobile devices use virtualization technology to abstract the hardware from the application platform, making devices more flexible and useful.

But perhaps the item with the most long-term impact on embedded and mobile development is Linux. There’s always going to be a role for internally developed operating systems that are explicitly designed for a specific bit of hardware—they’re just becoming more capable, as seen by Symbian’s addition of Java support to its Series 40 platform for mass-market devices.

Nevertheless, it’s becoming clear that Linux is proving flexible enough and robust enough to be useful as an embedded or mobile platform. For example, MontaVista Software was able to talk up the performance of its Linux-based Pro 5, claiming that it could beat real-time requirements in a number of cases.

Meanwhile, in recognition of the strength of numbers, industry players set up the LiMo Foundation with the aim of promoting Linux as a platform for mobile devices, and welcomed a second wave of members that ranged from carriers to chip makers. Even Intel caught the community bug, releasing the latest version of its Mobile Platform SDK as an open source project in July.

Although the embedded and mobile space will always be far more fragmented than the laptop, desktop or server markets, one thing is clear: The overlap of technology between the first group and the second is greater than ever before. 2008 should see even more work in that direction.


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