1. FROM THE PRESIDENT 2. Details of New Java Benchmarks Go Public 3. Q1 Benchmark Score Reports 4. Searching and Understanding Score Reports Made Simpler 5. EEMBC Welcomes New Members 6. Events - Embedded Systems Conference 7. New Leadership for EEMBC Subcommittees ___________________ 1. FROM THE PRESIDENT What I Wouldn't't Do For EEMBC We had been planning this trip for many months. On February 17, I was to fly into Nice, France to jointly deliver an EEMBC presentation at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes. Then on February 18, I was scheduled to leave Nice and head up to Nuremberg, Germany, to deliver another EEMBC presentation at the Embedded World Congress. That was the plan, anyways. Needless to say, there were a few wrinkles in that plan. Day 1: The trip started off on the right foot. My plane landed in Nice, and 15 minutes later, with luggage in hand, I boarded the bus for a 45-minute ride over to Cannes. The bus arrived at the station, I disembarked and walked the six blocks to the hotel dragging my 52 pound suitcase behind me. Can't complain, Cannes is a beautiful place. Day 2: Show time. The EEMBC presentation, scheduled for 2:00 p.m., went off without a hitch. Tim Rahrer (Zucotto) and I co-presented "Benchmarking and Optimizing Java Real-World Performance" to a full house of about 300 people. Day 3: The plan for this day was to make it from Nice to Nuremberg by 2:30 p.m. to deliver another EEMBC presentation, "Development of Embedded Java and MPEG Benchmarks for Consumer Electronic Devices." I woke at 6 a.m., allowing plenty of time to get to the airport for a 9 a.m. flight. After checking in, I noticed that the flight was delayed an hour. Not good. This delay would result in missing my connection in Munich. Time for Plan B. I went back out to the ticket counter in Nice and requested that my luggage be pulled off the plane in Munich. This way I could arrange for alternate travel by train or taxi to get to Nuremberg. "Not a problem, Mr. Levy", the airline personnel said. So I merrily went back down to the gate to await the departure of the delayed flight. While waiting I phoned my friend in Munich and asked for advice on getting from Munich to Nuremberg, and while on the phone, they announced for everyone to board the bus that would take us to the plane. But by the time I realized this and hung up the phone, the bus was pulling away from the terminal and the airline personnel had to run after the bus and bang on the back window to get them to stop. I made it, barely. The next surprise came a few minutes later when I discovered that instead of the jet that was supposed to make the trip in one hour, the airlines had substituted in a turbo prop that doubled the flying time. I arrived at the Munich airport at noon. I scooted off the plane and in a mad rush, I went out into the terminal, shortly thereafter realizing that I forgot to pick up my luggage. It took me 20 minutes to get back through customs and when I arrived at the luggage carousel, my suitcase was gone. The baggage personnel picked it up and somehow noticed that its final destination was Nuremberg, so they sent it on its way to wait for the 3:00 flight to Nuremberg. Now it's about 12:40 and I started to panic a bit. The thought of flying all the way to Europe to miss my presentation slot wasn't appealing. I immediately got on the phone to Chris Smith, Director of Marketing in Europe for Green Hills Software, which had generously provided space in its booth at the Nuremberg show for an EEMBC exhibit. The choice now was to take a later plane or hire a taxi for the 180-kilometer ride from the Munich Airport to the Messe Nuremberg. Urged on by Chris and Bob Decker, EEMBC's marcom manager, I hustled outside the terminal, negotiated a flat rate with a taxi driver, and within seconds was en route to Nuremberg. The autobahn is so much fun in a nice Mercedes, and we were cruising at around 160-170 km/hour. I kept looking at my watch and the distance signs, and as they counted down I realized that I was going to make it in plenty of time. I relaxed in the back seat and enjoyed the ride. We had just passed a sign saying "Nurnberg 30 km" when I noticed the warning lights flashing on the Mercedes' dashboard. I looked out the rear window and saw a tremendous plume of smoke billowing out of my taxi and its exploded engine. It took the driver a few seconds to start moving out of the fast lane, but before the driver could get off the road, the car ground to a halt. I quickly looked back and in a split second realized that the huge truck barreling down on us wasn't going to be able to stop. I didn't even have time to say "goodbye" to myself. Amazingly, at the very last instant, the truck was able to swerve; clipping the back end of the taxi in a loud bang and traveling for another 300 yards before it finally came to a stop. This was probably the closest had ever come to the end. I quickly got my head straightened out, jumped out of the taxi, and after looking very carefully, went behind the vehicle and pushed it off the road. Well, now it really didn't look like I was going to make it to my presentation. While the driver was having a nervous breakdown, I asked if she would call for another taxi. No problem, one will be there in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes came and went, and finally at 2:30 I phoned Chris again, asking him to inform Bob that all bets were off. After some frantic searching, Chris found Bob standing just outside the front entrance of the Nuremberg Messe looking searchingly at arriving taxis. He passed on the news to Bob, and Bob went off to do some fast talking with the conference organizers. At this point, I began to see the humor in this situation. Escaping death is like having a birthday. And while I waited on the side of the autobahn, in the brisk 30øF weather, I couldn't stop smiling. Finally at 3:15, after more than 1.5 hours of waiting, my new taxi arrived, although at that point, I had conceded that I missed my presentation slot. But when I arrived at the Nuremberg Messe, Bob was standing outside to greet me with the great news that the show coordinators had moved presentations around and I had 15 minutes to grab a drink and get my head in gear. I started off my presentation with a very short rendition of my travel experience, certainly gaining the respect and empathy of the audience, and from there I gave one of the best talks of my life (at least of my new life). What I wouldn't do for EEMBC! ___________________ 2. Details of New Java Benchmarks Go Public EEMBC has announced the components of its new Java benchmark suite, which provides the industry's first certifiable mechanism for evaluating the performance of Java J2ME implementations running on platforms such as mobile phones and PDAs. Application benchmarks for the first EEMBCR Java benchmark suite include photo decoding, a computation-intensive chess game, an Internet-usage benchmark for stressing CLDC threading, a cryptographic package oriented toward M-commerce, and an XML parser benchmark to exercise email text searching. Focus for the new suite is devices running on J2ME, the Java standard for mobile devices. Until now Java benchmarks have been suitable only for measuring the performance of Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) in PCs and servers. Because handheld systems use smaller processors and typically offer fewer than 256 kbytes of memory, the new benchmarks fill a crucial gap. Commenting on the new benchmarks, industry-watcher Will Strauss of Forward Concepts said "Mobile implementations will drive growth for Java in 2003, so EEMBC's timing with these new Java benchmarks couldn't be better. Java acceleration technologies are proliferating to meet the needs of mobile applications, and the EEMBC benchmarks provide a quantitative means to weigh their merits. Embedded code within the EEMBC benchmarks works as a sort of watermark to prevent 'spoofing,' this ensures that results are genuine and not bypassing critical operations to show better speed." The new EEMBC Java suite was developed by a group within the consortium including representatives of Aplix, ARM, esmertec, IBM, Insignia, Intel, Motorola, Sun, Symbian, and Tao Group. Be sure to check out the online white paper. "This is the first time that OEMs implementing Java in their mobile embedded devices will be able to compare competing technologies objectively," said Rod Crawford, EEMBC Java Subcommittee Chairman and Java Debug Product Manager at ARM. "The next step will include the certification and publication of benchmark scores from the competing companies. I also plan to lead the Java Subcommittee in the development of next-generation benchmarks that will evolve with the needs of the industry." ___________________ 3. Q1 Benchmark Score Reports ARM, IBM, Improv Systems, LSI Logic, MIPS, and Motorola, published new benchmark scores in the first quarter of 2003, bringing the total number of score reports available for free on the EEMBC web site to more than 230. Score details: ARM simulated scores on the ARM1026EJ-S processor core for all EEMBC application-based benchmark suites. IBM out-of-the-box scores on the 500-MHz PowerPC 440GP in all five EEMBC application-based benchmark suites. Improv simulated out-of-the-box and Full Fury telecom benchmark scores JazzT Telecom XT processor. LSI Logic Simulated telecom scores for its ZSP500 hard core. Both out-of-the-box and Full Fury scores were published for the 325-MHz simulation. MIPS Scores for the MIPS64 20Kc core, running at 600 MHz against all five of EEMBC's application-based benchmark suites. Motorola out-of-the-box scores for the 1.3-GHz MPC7447 across all five EEMBC benchmark suites plus Full Fury scores for Networking and Telcom. Complete details are available from the Search Benchmark Scores page http://www.eembc.org/benchmark/benchmain.asp on the EEMBC Web site. ___________________ 4. Searching and Understanding Score Reports Made Simplier A redesigned Search Benchmark Scores page on the EEMBC Web site provides easy-to-use radio buttons to simplify searches for benchmark scores. Key results of all silicon or simulated score reports for a given application area can be brought up with a single click, or you can show scores from selected manufacturers only. Tabular results can be sorted by processor name, compiler, certification date, and certification type (out-of-the-box or Full Fury), and full score reports can easily be displayed side-by-side. To try the new search mechanism, visit the EEMBC Web site at http://www.eembc.org/benchmark. EEMBC is now in the process of updating its benchmark Data Sheets, which can be viewed on the EEMBC Web site at www.eembc.org/benchmark/datasheet. New data sheets for Office Automation, Telecom, and Consumer benchmark suites provide a detailed description of the benchmark and analysis of computing resources used in running the benchmark. ___________________ 5. EEMBC Welcomes New Members EEMBC is pleased to announce two new board members, Analog Devices and VIA Technologies, Inc. Analog Devices rejoins the Consortium after a three-year hiatus and will be represented on the EEMBC Board by Russ Rivin. VIA Technologies, whose products include the C3 and Cyrix MII processors, will be represented by Charles Shelor. Renesas Technology is the new name of the company combining the semiconductor operations of board members Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. Renesas is organized into three primary business units: Microcontroller (MCU), system-on-chip (SoC) and SiP products; mixed signal, RF, and discrete devices; and memory chips, which include flash and SRAM products. The new name is derived from Renaissance Semiconductor for Advanced Solutions. esmertec, which has acquired the Java virtual machine business of Insignia, has joined the consortium as a member of the Java subcommittee. Founded in 1999, the company's JbedT ME product is a drop-in replacement for Sun Microsystems' J2MET CLDC/MIDP technology. Joining the Consortium as a third-party tools vendor is Mentor Graphics. The company's current areas of focus include tools for system-on-chip verification, HDL and FPGA design, physical design and analysis, and board and system design. EEMBC sends best wishes to departing members ChipWrights, Equator Technologies, and Fulcrum Microsystems, with hopes for a return to membership when business conditions improve. ___________________ 6. Events Visit EEMBC at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, April 23-25, Moscone Center, Booth 2030. The consortium extends its thanks to Green Hills Software for providing prime space in the Green Hills booth for an EEMBC at the Embedded World Congress, held February 18-20 in Nuremberg, Germany. The Nuremberg show was the setting for press meetings to launch the new EEMBC Java J2ME benchmark suite, as well as a conference presentation by EEMBC President Markus Levy, "Development of Embedded Java and MPEG Benchmarks for Consumer Electronic Devices" on February 18. The day before, Levy and Tim Rahrer, Director of Technology at Zucotto Wireless Inc., spoke on "Benchmarking and Optimizing Java Real-World Performance" for an audience of more than 300 attendees at the GSM World Congress in Cannes, France. ___________________ 7. New Leadership for EEMBC Subcommittees New chairs for EEMBCs Automotive/Industrial, Consumer, and Telecom subcommittees were elected at the EEMBC meetings on March 11. Manfred Choutka, Business Development Manager at Infineon Technologies, is new leader of the Automotive/Industrial Subcommittee. A 10-year industry veteran, he joined Infineon from STMicroelectronics in 1999 and was previously with distributor Atlantik Electronic. He is a graduate of the Fachhochschule Muenchen of Munich, Germany. Manfred says focus for the Auto/Indy committee will be gaining acceptance of the benchmark suite at automotive/industrial OEMs, work on new benchmark kernels, and introducing the hardware test harness for Automotive/Industrial benchmark certification. Sergei Larin, Senior Applications Engineer at Motorola, was elected chair of the Consumer Subcommittee. At Motorola, Sergei provides support and expertise for promoting the Power PC AltiVec vector technology. Previously he worked at BOPS, Inc. on the ManArray family of DSP processors and at the EEMBC Certification Labs, where he participated in the development, porting and functional testing of the Consortium's embedded processors benchmark suites. He holds a Ph.D. from North Carolina State University and an M.S. from the University of South Carolina, both in Computer Engineering. Sergei' s work as Consumer Subcommittee chair will be focused on widening the acceptance of EEMBC as the industry-standard benchmark suite. Gil Naveh, Chief Scientist at StarCore, is the new Telecom Subcommittee chair. Gil's background includes positions at Motorola, I.C. Com, Infineon Technologies and Envara. He holds B.Sc and M.Sc degrees from Ben-Gurion University of Israel. Plans for the Telecom Subcommittee include driving development of new benchmark kernels for the Telecom suite and for VoIP. We'd also like to mention the long-standing chairs doing an excellent job: *Rod Crawford, ARM, Java Subcommittee *William Bryant, Sun, Networking Subcommittee *Ron Olson, IBM, Office Automation Subcommittee ___________________ If you do not wish to receive e-mail from EEMBC, you can un-subscribe by accessing the following link: http://www.eembc.org/asp/unsubscribe.asp. EEMBC sends no more than one e-mail per month to registered users at www.eembc.org. 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