Malaysians need to move up the value chain, we've often been told by our country's leaders and policy makers over the last 10 or so years.

As lower skilled assembly and manufacturing jobs, which have provided over 30 years of employment opportunities are moved away to lower wage countries due to globalisation and open borders, it's no longer enough for Malaysian workers, technicians and engineers to simply engage in the production of finished products but need to be able to design them and develop the underlying operating system which drives them.

So instead of just assembling and marketing products such a DVD, digital music, digital video players, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the many more devices, appliances and equipment, we now have to know how to develop the embedded operating systems and applications which drive them and give them their seeming intelligence, and there's been an increasing interest from  working engineers and technicians to upgrade their skills and local colleges and universities to incorporate embedded systems development in their curricula.

For example, eACT Technologies has been providing short courses in embedded software development in Malaysia since 2004 and and has trained over 250 engineers in industry to upgrade their skills and obtain certification, according to its technical director Suresh Santhana Krishnan.

“There's lots of interest today, from local universities and colleges to implement embedded development labs, such as Intel Lab and Arm Lab on campus and we are in discussions with local institutions to conduct diploma courses in embedded development,” he said.

As for a career, there are many opportunities for outsourced development work from overseas.

Hands-on workshops

eACT itself conducts four and five day hands-on training workshops on Embedded Linux & Device Driver development and  Windows CE Product Development Using PDA Platform respectively, with the Linux and Windows CE 6.0 workshops alternating each month between Kuala Lumpur and Penang, subject to a minimum attendance of five at each city.

Windows CE is used in consumer devices such as GPS navigators and a few smartphones, and while it's more popular on industrial or professional devices which don't need the lifestyle features found on consumer smartphones, upon which Windows Mobile derived from Windows CE is more common but competence in Windows CE development provides the foundation for Windows Mobile development.

At the same time, there are very few straight embedded Linux phones, upon which Linux-based OS such as Android are gaining prominence, so why does eACT not conduct workshops on Android instead?

"Gaining competence in embedded Linux development provides the basis for people to develop on Android," said Suresh. "Moreover, there's not much information yet available at the kernel level development on Android. Currently their architecture SDK available on http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.  Their architecture is not open yet, so they entertain users to develop applications on their SDK, while Linux lets developers go right down to the underlying core. We however are planning Android courses in the near future,” he added.

Also, while Windows CE is a proprietary OS, Microsoft lets beginners download a 90-days free evaluation of Windows CE 6.0 and its application programming interface (API) is made available to developers who register with the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

FriendlyARM

Students are provided with a FriendlyARM Mini 2440 “target board” - ie. a single-board computer with a touchscreen, interface cables and software which they can purchase and take home after the workshop and continue with their experimentation and development.

Measuring 100 x 100 mm, the FriendlyARM Mini 2440 is powered by a low-cost, 400 MHz Samsung S3C2440A ARM9 processor, comes with Flash memory with BIOS, electrically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM), external SD card slot, three RS-232 serial ports, USB ports, 3.5mm stereo audio output jack, audio input & condenser microphone, 10/100 Mb/s RJ-45 Ethernet port, real time clock with battery, buzzer, 20-pin camera interface, LCD interface, touchscreen, power supply and it's compatible with Android, Linux 2.6 and Windows CE5 and 6 OS.

The Linux workshop teaches students about the kernel, booting and kernel initialisation, basic Linux common set, system calls, embedded OS, the GNU toolchain, how to build a kernel, experimenting with the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, setting up the host and target boards, introduction to the ARM architecture, loading the boot loader, configuring the board, installing the application, debugging it using the board, compiling and configuring the kernel, Linux device driver using X86, introduction to Linux device drivers, debugging techniques and lab sessions.

The Windows CE workshop involves an introduction to the platform builder IDE, customising the OS design, configuring Windows Embedded CE sub-projects, managing catalogue items, building and deploying a runtime image, editing build configuration files, analysing build results, deploying a run-time image on the target platform, a lab session on building and runing a run-time image on the emulator, generating a software development kit (SDK), customising a board support package, configuring memory mapping of a BSP, developing device drivers, implementing a stream interface driver, configuring and loading a driver, implementing an interrupt mechanism in a device driver, an exercise in driver code examples, debugging and testing the system, configuring the run-time image to enable debugging and testing the system using the CE test kit.

Prerequisites for the workshops are a knowledge of C or C++ programming languages and a knowledge of Windows CE or Linux, while an engineering or information and communication technology background is preferred but not necessary, so basically any technically competent person in these fields, with or without a formal qualification can participate.

Fees are RM6,000 for each of the courses, plus RM400 if the students wants to take the FriendlyARM kit home. Discounts are available to educational institutions, as well as individuals and companies can claim the cost of these courses from the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF).

These courses will be conducted by Mr. Gautam and Mr. Animesh from eACT's India office. They both have over 10-15 years experience consulting in Windows CE and Linux topics respectively.

eACT can also recommend participants who've completed the workshops to prospective employers.

Wi-Fi and WiMAX

Upcoming courses include a five day course on wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) IEEE 802.11 a to n and a four-day course on WiMAX IEEE 802.16.

The WiFi course will be held from 19 to 23 April and the WiMAX course from 26 to 29 April, both at  eACT's office, 192-2, 2nd floor, Wisma Sri Krishna, Jalan Tun Sambanthan, facing KL Sentral.

The WiMAX course will cover wireless technology fundamentals, including types of wireless systems and evolutions, fundamentals of cellular wireless, frequency reuse, basic transmission as well as reception operations in wireless systems, wireless channels, multipath channel effects.

It will provide and introduction to the WiMAX PHY (physical) layer, including an overview of the WiMAX IEEE 802.16 set of standards, the history and the evolution of the various 802.16x standards and their features, the various licensed and unlicensed frequency bands used by WiMAX, various applications and services planned over WiMAX, different types of networks and evolution, physical layer concepts and key challenges.

OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) used in WiMAX. OFDMA versus OFDM-TDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex-Time Division Multiple Access), PUSC and FUSC in WiMAX including the concept of sub-channels, tiles, slots and zones, band AMC and its implementation in WiMAX.

Introduction to WiMAX MAC (Media Access Control) Layer, typical TDD (Time Division Duplex) frame structure in WiMAX, concept of connections and types of connections, network entry process, role of DLMAP and ULMAP, role of DCD and UCD, concept of service flows , states, and Dynamic Service Addition, role and types of polling, MAC headers, types of service and bandwidth request.

Security in WiMAX , an inoduction to encryption and Security concepts, handover in WiMAX, types of Handover in WiMAX, sleep and idle mode operations, periodic ranging steps,  retransmission, motivation, multiple sntenna technologies and their use in WiMAX, inlcuding multiple antenna options in WiMAX.

The WiFi course will cover a similarly comprehensive set of topics relevant to WiFi.

eACT works with five universities in India and also elsewhere to provide the trainers. In the April & May timeframe, Dr. Srikanth, a professor from Anna University in Chennai will lecture on W-Fi and WiMAX, while Dr. Hwang JJ from Korea will lecture on Digital TV, Video Streaming and Video /Audio codes.

Both also are consultants to industry. Dr. Srikanth consults telcos and in WiMAX, while Dr Hwang, a specialist in video streaming, H.264, MPEG & JPEG coding and compressions techniques, and also heads MPEG and JPEG committees on video streaming.

Besides these workshops, eACT can also organise basic courses on Linux and Windows kernel internals and device driver development on PCs, as such development abilities on PCs provides the basis for embedded development on devices, which is subject to greater constraints due to their more limited dimensions, computing power, memory and storage capacities.

eACT also conducts free seminars on embedded development and other topics. For examples, it will hold a seminar on network monitoring, Web applications and network security at the Putra World Trade Centre at the end of April, and on green energy in May.

Interested parties should e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , call 603 22725945 or visit www.embeddedact.com