I just got off the plane from a great week visiting HQ in Santa Clara, CA. It is always fun to spend some time with my colleagues out there. Read to the bottom if you’d like to save some money and get some geek training.

I can’t say enough how thankful I am for everyone attending last week’s multicore webinar. The turnout was great. I enjoyed doing it and I hope you found it valuable. We’ve got some great upcoming sessions that we’ll mention closer to the broadcast date.

When preparing the session I tried very hard to focus on technology and techniques rather than products. That might seem a little odd coming from someone in the vendor community but I’m enough of a geek that I get a little bored listening to someone drone on about their datasheet. Let me know if that was the right balance for you in the comments, please.

If you didn’t watch the session you can catch the recording.

On the flight home I was reviewing presentations for the Vision 2008 Embedded Linux Conference. There are some really great sessions planned. If you’ve not heard Paul McKenney, Jonathan Corbet, or Chris Hallinan speak I think you’ll be in for a treat. Paul’s presentation wins kudos for best cartooning. I’m also very interested in catching up with Deepak Saxena on the work he is doing at One Laptop Per Child. There are also some hands on training events that I’m hoping I can shoehorn myself into.

I took some time in the office to strong-arm our event planner, Pamela, into giving me a discount code for my loyal blog readers. I could have asked for some of her chocolate chip cookies instead… but I was thinking of you. If you would like to attend Vision 2008 you can get a serious discount. Just go to the registration page and enter the discount code BRAD on the payment page. The discount isn’t as good as the student rate of $130 but it is darn close.

I’ll buy a beer for any blog reader (who I don’t already know from work) who says hello and joins me onstage for a song when we play Rock Band 2 on Thursday night.

Brad

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Thank you to all of you who attended “Multicore 101: Migrating Embedded Applications to a Multicore Environment with Linux“. I am grateful to Ian Forsyth of Freescale as my co-presenter for the fruitful collaboration on this topic. Some quick reminders:

• Vision 2008: October 1-3, 2008 in San Francisco, California. This year’s top conference for embedded Linux developers will include a number of valuable technical presentations. Here are a few of them:

• Hands-on multicore Linux lab
• Linux synchronization mechanisms in driver development
• The Kernel Report by Jonathan Corbet of LWN.net
• Fast boot: Tips and techniques for improving Linux startup time
• Real time vs. real fast: How to choose? by Paul McKenney

Vision 2008 is sponsored in part by Freescale.

• Test Drive: If you’d like to take MontaVista Linux for a spin register for a free Test Drive session. You’ll be able to access a live system over the web including access to a Virtutech Simics powered hardware simulator.
• If you have more questions please enter your questions as a comment below. Ian and I will post all the answers we can get to.
• Subscribe to my blog for other posts from me concerning multicore, embedded Linux, security, the GPL and open source licensing and a little about MontaVista. Just click here for to subscribe via RSS.

Thank you again for your attendance and questions!

Brad Dixon

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It seems a little odd to say thank you in a public setting to a customer you can’t name but that’s the odd spot I find myself in.

Back in 2003 I was drafted as an emergency fill in for a colleague at an important meeting. I thought I was just doing a quick favor. In actuality the potential customer had about a hundred fairly complicated questions to discuss about Linux in the telecom environment. Answering their questions turned into an all day meeting. I was exhausted at the end of it.

After a brief pause I’ve been associated with this customer almost continually. I’ve worked closely with them on technical, business, and of course around requirements for new products. I can say confidently that this engineering team is one of the most professional that I’ve ever worked with. Even when they are under fire they work with each other and their partners with respect.

They are also incredibly competent. The nature of their applications and their customers demands the utmost accountability for failure and expertise at every level of abstraction. One technical issue literally had to be tracked down to a defect in an upgraded firmware load delivered in a new batch of hard drives. The systematic analysis skills and discipline required to kill that problem are not demonstrated widely.

I’m taking on a new set of responsibilities at MontaVista and as such I’m having to, after 5 years, back away a bit from my favorite customer. As I do so they should know that they have my respect and that I’m always a phone call or email away.

Thank you!

Brad

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It’s been a really busy week for me. Just put the wraps on a webinar that is premiering next week discussing multicore computing with Freescale. Ian Forsythe of Freescale will discuss the multicore challenge and their announced 8-core processor the P4080. I’ll follow up with a discussion of a strategy to migrate your application from single core to multicore.

Just a little taste of what will be in the session:

Linux’s inherent readiness for multicore

I hope you’ll attend. You can register for one of two timeslots:

• Thursday, September 11th 7 am ET /12 pm Western European Daylight

• Thursday, September 11th 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern

Here’s the more official description:

When considering a move to a multicore environment, the number one
question embedded developers ask is “how do I leverage the work I’ve
already done in my applications?” Though multicore hardware has
provided improved performance for the embedded market, software
developers are challenged with taking advantage of the millions of
lines of single-threaded legacy code they have already written. This
creates a paradigm shift in how developers must think about and
implement future programs. This webinar will discuss the benefits of
embedded Linux as a solution with multicore and help systems engineers
consider what’s important as they make the transition. We will
conclude with an overview of MontaVista TestDrive, a virtual
evaluation of MontaVista Linux on a Virtutech Simics model of the
Freescale QorIQ P4080 and MPC8641D Power Architecture processors. We
invite attendees to sign-up for an evaluation of MontaVista software
on the latest Freescale multicore environments.

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