Embedded Systems Design Lab
Experience You Can Trust
25 Years of Embedded Systems Design for New Product Development
Embedded Systems Design Lab has a proven track record. In fact, we've been performing contract product development assistance for over a quarter of a century. With dozens of real-world designs in place throughout the world, we understand what it takes to launch a new product and support it throughout its entire lifetime. We've worked in all aspects of the product design cycle, from analog and digital circuit design, RF signalling, battery operated, PCB layout and assembly, programmable logic, and, of course, micro-controller hardware and firmware development. Seeing that a product's ultimate success (or failure) lies in the reliability and functionality of its micro-controller firmware, we have made firmware development our exclusive focus this past decade. We've worked as a registered design consultant for micro-controller manufacturer Microchip Technology® for many years, and have also aided customers with designs using micro-controllers built by other manufacturers such as Cypress Semiconductor®, Atmel®, Xilinx®, and Altera/Intel®. As some micro-controller manufacturers push the edge of the envelope in cost/performance trade-off, we are seeing some truly interesting possibilities arise. We have found that Padauk Technology® leads the pack in this, producing very capable micro-controller devices that cost only a fraction of their competition. Their parts have incorporated cost-saving architectural decisions that do require special consideration during the up-front design stage, but yield tremendous benefit throughout the manufacturing life-cycle of the product they are integrated into. We have chosen to become expert in the Padauk architecture and design tool-flow, allowing our clients both large and small the ability to utilize the cost-saving benefits of Padauk micro-controllers without a large time investment in learning the Padauk design ecosystem up-front.
Our Design Expertise Launches Two Supporting Sister Companies
At the heart of every embedded system used to develop a new product is a programmable digital controller. This device coordinates the functionality of the entire product, enabling and sequencing the various analog and digital subsystems of the design to bring the features of the product to life. Designers have two category choices for their programmable digital controller. The first, and most common, is a micro-controller -- a device running a program that is sequentially executed to perform the pre-programmed tasks related to the product's operation. The second programmable digital controller option is a field programmable logic array (FPGA), typically utilized in products requiring high speed data processing, custom hardware peripheral creation, video processing, or other very high speed control operations. We have decades of experience with both micro-controller and FPGA design for new product development.
Our expertise in the arena of programmable micro-controllers has led to the creation of a sister company, Paladin Semiconductor ( www.paladinsemi.com ). Paladin Semiconductor offers a line of application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) implemented on programmable micro-controllers. This line has been growing since the mid nineties, and Paladin Semiconductor parts are currently in operation in many hundreds of consumer and industrial products worldwide. Secondly, our experience with embedded control using FPGA devices has launched Embedded Systems Design Lab's second sister company, Peripheral Dynamics ( www.peripheral-dynamics.com ). This group designs and supports Intellectual Property (IP) building blocks utilized in SoC (system on chip) embedded systems, usable in programmable logic devices from every major vendor.
While these two sister companies largely offer off-the-shelf embedded solutions, Embedded Systems Design Lab focuses on the custom work of our client's design. We work with you to understand not only the desired functionality of your product, but also the environment it will operate in, potential modes of failure that must be mitigated, as well as other factors unique to your product and design. With that information, we build firmware designed to run on a low-cost Padauk micro-controller device that will provide the functionality, reliability, and lifetime performance that your product requires.
Deep Firmware Development Experience
We have a legacy in firmware design for product development, with hundreds of designs in the books. A large portion of our work is performed using the C language, which we have found to be ideal for embedded systems design due to its high-level language constructs that speed development, yet also its closeness to the bare-metal hardware layer of the processor that facilitates specialized timing and control loops that require very low system latency. Some of our applications also call for assembly-language coding, typically to access a specialized feature of the micro-controller or to create an extremely tight control loop. We work regularly with C source code and the compiled assembly language it produces, which has given us great insight into the operation of microcontroller CPU's as they perform their work inside a modern micro-controller. Our experience comes naturally to play with our design efforts for Padauk micro-controllers. Due to their unique cost-effective processor architecture, some high-level C language constructs (that require additional processor hardware overhead and associated cost) are replaced by assembly language macros. Working with these upfront design trade-offs in order to provide product functionality at the lowest per-unit cost possible is our primary objective, and our experience and expertise in the various facets of micro-controller program creation and execution flow enable us to produce high-quality source code, fully documented for design review, ongoing maintenance, and future feature-enhancement needs.
Full Engineering Test Bench
Micro-controller firmware must, of course, operate on real-world hardware. We utilize a full test bench of equipment to verify your design during development. Waveform capture oscilloscopes, multi-channel logic analyzers, and RF spectrum analyzers are just a handful of the instruments that we utilize to confirm successful operation of the firmware designs we create for our clients. We'll work with your existing hardware design team, providing them with firmware and fixtures to test onsite at your location, and also performing live hardware testing on our end as well. Together we work to ensure that all facets of your design needs are met, including overall performance, noise immunity, feature functionality, and total-system robustness.
History of Supporting our Client's Designs
We have numerous clients that currently utilize our designs. We gladly provide ongoing support for these clients, making design enhancements as their product market dictates. One recent example is a scientific instrument we developed over a decade ago, which originally logged data to a SD card. The customer recently asked for the logging functionality to instead write to a USB flash drive, and we were happy to accommodate. We enjoy following along with our customers, keeping in the loop should the need for a firmware update or even a bug fix occur. We succeed by establishing win-win relationships with our clients, and work hard to ensure your product's market success.
With a solid background in analog and digital circuit design for product development, along with deep experience in micro-controller system design and programmable logic system development, Embedded Systems Design Lab sits in an ideal position to offer our clients assistance in bringing their new product ideas off of paper and into reality. Additionally, as we have done numerous times, we can also rework your existing product to lower its Bill of Materials cost. Embedded Systems Design Lab's relationship with micro-controller manufacturer Padauk Technology offers us the unique opportunity to assist our clients in incorporating ultra-low cost, high performance micro-controllers into their next design.
We know embedded system design, and would appreciate the opportunity to put our skills to work for you. Feel free to contact our Chief Technical Officer Todd Peterson at [email protected] for a no-obligation discussion of your application to determine if our services would be a benefit to you.
Embedded Systems Design Lab has a proven track record. In fact, we've been performing contract product development assistance for over a quarter of a century. With dozens of real-world designs in place throughout the world, we understand what it takes to launch a new product and support it throughout its entire lifetime. We've worked in all aspects of the product design cycle, from analog and digital circuit design, RF signalling, battery operated, PCB layout and assembly, programmable logic, and, of course, micro-controller hardware and firmware development. Seeing that a product's ultimate success (or failure) lies in the reliability and functionality of its micro-controller firmware, we have made firmware development our exclusive focus this past decade. We've worked as a registered design consultant for micro-controller manufacturer Microchip Technology® for many years, and have also aided customers with designs using micro-controllers built by other manufacturers such as Cypress Semiconductor®, Atmel®, Xilinx®, and Altera/Intel®. As some micro-controller manufacturers push the edge of the envelope in cost/performance trade-off, we are seeing some truly interesting possibilities arise. We have found that Padauk Technology® leads the pack in this, producing very capable micro-controller devices that cost only a fraction of their competition. Their parts have incorporated cost-saving architectural decisions that do require special consideration during the up-front design stage, but yield tremendous benefit throughout the manufacturing life-cycle of the product they are integrated into. We have chosen to become expert in the Padauk architecture and design tool-flow, allowing our clients both large and small the ability to utilize the cost-saving benefits of Padauk micro-controllers without a large time investment in learning the Padauk design ecosystem up-front.
Our Design Expertise Launches Two Supporting Sister Companies
At the heart of every embedded system used to develop a new product is a programmable digital controller. This device coordinates the functionality of the entire product, enabling and sequencing the various analog and digital subsystems of the design to bring the features of the product to life. Designers have two category choices for their programmable digital controller. The first, and most common, is a micro-controller -- a device running a program that is sequentially executed to perform the pre-programmed tasks related to the product's operation. The second programmable digital controller option is a field programmable logic array (FPGA), typically utilized in products requiring high speed data processing, custom hardware peripheral creation, video processing, or other very high speed control operations. We have decades of experience with both micro-controller and FPGA design for new product development.
Our expertise in the arena of programmable micro-controllers has led to the creation of a sister company, Paladin Semiconductor ( www.paladinsemi.com ). Paladin Semiconductor offers a line of application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) implemented on programmable micro-controllers. This line has been growing since the mid nineties, and Paladin Semiconductor parts are currently in operation in many hundreds of consumer and industrial products worldwide. Secondly, our experience with embedded control using FPGA devices has launched Embedded Systems Design Lab's second sister company, Peripheral Dynamics ( www.peripheral-dynamics.com ). This group designs and supports Intellectual Property (IP) building blocks utilized in SoC (system on chip) embedded systems, usable in programmable logic devices from every major vendor.
While these two sister companies largely offer off-the-shelf embedded solutions, Embedded Systems Design Lab focuses on the custom work of our client's design. We work with you to understand not only the desired functionality of your product, but also the environment it will operate in, potential modes of failure that must be mitigated, as well as other factors unique to your product and design. With that information, we build firmware designed to run on a low-cost Padauk micro-controller device that will provide the functionality, reliability, and lifetime performance that your product requires.
Deep Firmware Development Experience
We have a legacy in firmware design for product development, with hundreds of designs in the books. A large portion of our work is performed using the C language, which we have found to be ideal for embedded systems design due to its high-level language constructs that speed development, yet also its closeness to the bare-metal hardware layer of the processor that facilitates specialized timing and control loops that require very low system latency. Some of our applications also call for assembly-language coding, typically to access a specialized feature of the micro-controller or to create an extremely tight control loop. We work regularly with C source code and the compiled assembly language it produces, which has given us great insight into the operation of microcontroller CPU's as they perform their work inside a modern micro-controller. Our experience comes naturally to play with our design efforts for Padauk micro-controllers. Due to their unique cost-effective processor architecture, some high-level C language constructs (that require additional processor hardware overhead and associated cost) are replaced by assembly language macros. Working with these upfront design trade-offs in order to provide product functionality at the lowest per-unit cost possible is our primary objective, and our experience and expertise in the various facets of micro-controller program creation and execution flow enable us to produce high-quality source code, fully documented for design review, ongoing maintenance, and future feature-enhancement needs.
Full Engineering Test Bench
Micro-controller firmware must, of course, operate on real-world hardware. We utilize a full test bench of equipment to verify your design during development. Waveform capture oscilloscopes, multi-channel logic analyzers, and RF spectrum analyzers are just a handful of the instruments that we utilize to confirm successful operation of the firmware designs we create for our clients. We'll work with your existing hardware design team, providing them with firmware and fixtures to test onsite at your location, and also performing live hardware testing on our end as well. Together we work to ensure that all facets of your design needs are met, including overall performance, noise immunity, feature functionality, and total-system robustness.
History of Supporting our Client's Designs
We have numerous clients that currently utilize our designs. We gladly provide ongoing support for these clients, making design enhancements as their product market dictates. One recent example is a scientific instrument we developed over a decade ago, which originally logged data to a SD card. The customer recently asked for the logging functionality to instead write to a USB flash drive, and we were happy to accommodate. We enjoy following along with our customers, keeping in the loop should the need for a firmware update or even a bug fix occur. We succeed by establishing win-win relationships with our clients, and work hard to ensure your product's market success.
With a solid background in analog and digital circuit design for product development, along with deep experience in micro-controller system design and programmable logic system development, Embedded Systems Design Lab sits in an ideal position to offer our clients assistance in bringing their new product ideas off of paper and into reality. Additionally, as we have done numerous times, we can also rework your existing product to lower its Bill of Materials cost. Embedded Systems Design Lab's relationship with micro-controller manufacturer Padauk Technology offers us the unique opportunity to assist our clients in incorporating ultra-low cost, high performance micro-controllers into their next design.
We know embedded system design, and would appreciate the opportunity to put our skills to work for you. Feel free to contact our Chief Technical Officer Todd Peterson at [email protected] for a no-obligation discussion of your application to determine if our services would be a benefit to you.
