embedded award 2023: Tools nominees

A Rust-based user interface toolkit, a design support tool and a digital power workbench

Slint

Exhibitor: SixtyFPS GmbH
Hall/Booth:4/4-306

There wasn’t any commercial-grade Rust-based user interface toolkits that could be used to created smartphone-like graphical user interfaces on embedded devices. Rust, as a “memory-safe” language, produces secure code and, crucially, doesn't worsen performance to achieve it. The language has been steadily gaining adherents and is now at a turning point with it being an officially recognized and accepted language in Linux.

With this, Rust could very well become the dominant programming language replacing C/C++ in the embedded systems area. The ubiquity of smartphones and the decreasing cost of TFT screens have impacted on how we interface with embedded devices. TFT screens are being increasingly used on embedded devices to provide visual feedback as well as offering a touch-based system to control the device.

With a commercial-grade Rust-based user interface toolkit, manufacturers can significantly reduce software risks and security vulnerabilities without compromising on the end-user experience.
Compared to other Rust-based user interface toolkits, Slint’s focus on embedded and desktop platforms makes it a scalable solution – being able to run on devices with a few KBs of RAM to rendering complex User Interface on desktop.

Slint leverages declarative programming style to allow users to define the user interface in a markup language which can be integrated into an existing code base written in any programming language.

Rust, C++, and JavaScript are currently supported and integration into other programming languages are planned. “Live Preview” – the ability to instantaneously show design changes on development platform, and “Hot Reload” – the ability to update design on target hardware without full compilation of the program, allows faster validation of user interface that are built with Slint. Slint is developed together with the community in the open and benefits from reviews, contributions, and testing to achieve an overall high software quality.

RocqStat

Exhibitor: StatInf
Hall/Booth: 3A/3A-333

StatInf provides software tools and services for the timing verification of real-time embedded systems in the avionics, space, defence, automotive and transportation industries. Statinf's innovative product, RocqStat uses patented predictive statistics along with static analysis to provide detailed timing verification for multi-tiered software on architectures ranging from single-core to complex multi-core systems.

RocqStat, the embedded systems design support tool, offered by StatInf, reduces interference between programs so that they run safely while minimizing power consumption. RocqStat takes software or hardware traces of program execution times as input. It returns to the designer: a program execution profile, the interference model between several programs, a program execution and core allocation proposal, as well as the impact on energy consumption.

StatInf's approach allows for a fine-grained, low-level understanding of how programs run on hardware, mixed with sophisticated statistical techniques. To date, most companies use deterministic approaches to ensure functional safety, as they use simpler hardware and algorithms.

While AI algorithms and multi-core processors are rapidly taking over the market, due to their non-deterministic nature, deterministic approaches are not scalable to provide business advantage to the customer. To participate in the technological leap that are these AI algorithms and these multi-core processors while ensuring operational safety, statistical approaches are essential.