- Who says you can't bike to work in January?

- Who says you can't use your car as a snowplow?

- And who says you need winter tires?

Hey, do you remember Open Look? It was the GUI specification used by QNX Windows, a windowing system for versions 2 to 4 of the QNX RTOS. Open Look had a clean, simple appearance based on the philosophy that the application, not the windowing system, should hold the user's attention. Gaudy, it wasn't.

QNX Windows appeared on the scene in 1990, back when most desktop PCs still used DOS. Amazingly, it could run on 16-bit 286 machines with 2MB of RAM — and, remember, we're talking about a true windowing system here, not a simple graphics library. Developers used QNX Windows for a variety of mission-critical applications, including mail-sorting machines for the US Postal Service and a statistical process control system for a Motorola semiconductor fab.

The QNX Windows file manager, circa 1990.

So why am I mentioning all this? Because, while other RTOS vendors offer programming interfaces, they provide little in the way of user interfaces -- unless you count the command-line prompt. QNX, in comparison, has been at the forefront of embedded HMIs for as long as I can remember...

A plasma isn't a solid, a liquid, or a gas. It's a fourth state of matter that exhibits an array of unusual behaviors, which makes it pretty cool in my book. That said, some forms of plasma are hot. Very hot. So hot that no material can contain them. Like other forms of plasma, though, even hot plasmas can be contained by magnetic fields.

Taking advantage of that property, researchers at MIT are attempting to create hydrogen-based plasmas hot enough and dense enough to produce fusion reactions. Their ultimate goal: To create a simple, efficient source of electrical power that doesn’t churn out the radioactive wastes generated by today’s uranium-based fission reactors. Not a bad idea, given the growing demand for electricity worldwide. In China, for example, consumption is growing at more than 4% per year. The overall global rate isn’t far behind, at about 2.4%. Compounded yearly, that’s a lot of juice.

To understand what the MIT researchers are attempting, you have to travel back to the 1980s, when Voyager II detected plasma trapped in Jupiter's magnetosphere. That finding, according to Science Magazine, inspired the physicist Akira Hasegawa to propose a fusion reactor based on a magnetic dipole, which is simplest, most common type of magnetic field in the universe. As the name suggests, a dipole consists simply of a north pole and a south pole.

In a dipole reactor, a magnetically levitated, superconducting torus (picture a big metal donut floating in a vacuum chamber) generates lines of magnetic force similar to those that surround the Earth, Jupiter, and other magnetized planets. The reactor then uses pulses of microwave heating to create plasma discharges, which the magnetic field holds in place...

- Life magazine, now on Google

- Life in miniature, as seen through the microscope

- Monty Python (the folks who brought you the meaning of life), now officially on YouTube

- QNX touches your life

The U.S. military uses about 30 families of radio systems -- systems that, in many cases, can't communicate with one another. This incompatibility is inconvenient, inefficient, and, on occasion, downright dangerous for military personnel.

It's a serious problem. And to solve it, the Department of Defense (DoD) is investing heavily in software defined radio (SDR). The premise of SDR is simple: Rather than implement filters, signal detectors, and other radio components in hardware (the traditional model), you implement them in upgradeable software. This approach allows a single device to support multiple modulation schemes, wireless protocols, encryption standards, etc; it can also future-proof the device against new or updated standards that hit the airwaves.

The benefits extend far beyond military radios. By using SDR, a variety of products -- including wireless basestations, public-service radios, cellphones, and even in-car telematics systems -- can intelligently adapt to the evolving wireless landscape. Better yet, a single SDR radio can replace several conventional devices. Emergency personnel, for example, can communicate with one another without having to schlep multiple radios, as they often do today...

Back in September, I told you that the QNX Aviage acoustic processing suite had been shortlisted for an Elektra award. Well, I just got the news: QNX Aviage has won.

QNX Aviage is a small, modular software library that eliminates the dedicated hardware typically used to reduce noise and echo in automotive hands-free systems. As a result, automotive suppliers can build these systems for less -- which means that more cars can offer handsfree kits as standard equipment. A good thing, given that more and more jurisdictions are banning handheld cellphones in cars.

The suite has some cool features to help reduce driver distraction. For instance, it can dynamically raise volume levels during periods of high cabin noise, allowing the driver to hear the remote party without straining or fiddling with volume controls. It can also "fill in" the limited bandwidth of cellphone calls, making the remote party's voice fuller and more intelligible...

… WebKit for Neutrino 6.4.0 that is Lots has gone on since my last post on SRR.  After finishing up my parental leave last year  I decided that after working at QNX for nearly 10 years it was time for a change and took on a role at Crank Software. We’re doing a lot of interesting things [...]  Continue Reading >>