New Age Micro - Informational Articles

With the introduction of android application development, companies offering software consulting services have shifted gears to support this technology that provided a significant breakthrough for open source mobile platforms. Android provides software for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. The Android SDK provides the tools and application programming interfaces that are necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language. In android application development developers are free to take advantage of the device hardware, access location information, and run background services. This is the biggest advantage is that it is open source software.

The android application development market is the fastest growing market in mobile technology. This growth is attributed to the fact that android phones are available in any cell phone network and which makes them accessible to many subscribers. Android applications can be distributed for a fee, free of charge, or monetized with advertising. They are usually based on GPS and Wifi, SMS and Email, usage of Google maps, browser and contacts, and multimedia.

The android market has the highest percentage of applications from third-party developers. However these apps have to ask for permission before accessing certain features such as reading and writing to users' memory cards and accessing users' address books.

Mobile application developers use the android software development kit and the android native development kit for android application development. Most of the android developers have good experience in mobile applications and this has greatly contributed to their success. Software consulting firms are committed to testing and learning new technologies and teaming up with interested clients to develop their applications. These firms will as a norm carry out a feasibility study before any project is initiated, and followed by project management which is carried out in phases. When implementation is completed and the client is satisfied the project is then terminated. Consultations on hardware and software can also be done separately.

There are embedded systems everywhere you go. The product development services, consisting of qualified engineers, are responsible for the system architecture and design of such systems. They normally put emphasis on the embedded system hardware design, high level tools, and not forgetting the software as embedded system are now equipped with a fully functional operating system. Below are some of the characteristics of an embedded system.

The first characteristic is that embedded systems are designed for a specific task. This is different from other computer systems as embedded systems cannot carry out multiple tasks. Also, these systems have real time performance standards that have to be met for safety and usability. Secondly, embedded systems are not always standalone devices as some of them have small computerized parts within a larger part that serve a more general purpose. Thirdly, the programs and instructions written on the embedded systems are called firmware. They are stored in read only memory or flash memory. The firmware normally runs on limited memory and computer hardware resources.

Before embarking on the embedded system hardware design, most product development services of such system have to put into consideration the following design requirements of an embedded system.

The first design requirement is the real time or reactive operation. This means that the correctness of a computation done on an embedded system depends on the time the computation was delivered. The product development services responsible for the embedded system hardware design have to take into account the worst case performance scenario.

The harsh environment that these systems work in also requires consideration. Due to the fact that most of the embedded systems do not operate in a controlled environment, the embedded system hardware design should enable this computer system to function even under non-survivable fire conditions.

Thirdly, the security of the embedded system should also be considered. The HDL for ASIC or FPGA integrated circuits are used for the purposes of security. This is because HDL for ASIC or FPGA are secure microprocessors due to the fact that they support bit stream encryption. Designers have started using HDL for ASIC or FPGA integrated circuits for these systems as the hardware security of these systems is of paramount importance.

Lastly, the product development services of an embedded system must always consider the cost. Even if such embedded systems have stringent requirements, the cost is always an issue.

It is a well known fact that most embedded systems have requirements that vary significantly in the design of the system. The demands of a specific application normally dominate the hardware design of an embedded system.