Back from Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011

As we announced in a previous blog post, a large part of the Bootlin team attended the 2011 edition of the Embedded Linux Conference Europe in Prague last week.

This was the first european edition of the conference to last three days, and this was much appreciated as it gave the opportunity to attend a lot more conferences and to spend more time talking with developers of the community. My colleagues Michael Opdenacker and Maxime Ripard as well as myself really enjoyed this conference. It really allows to connect with members of the community, learn a lot of new things, and bring home a huge motivation to work on various projects. Despite a few marketing-oriented keynotes, the conference has kept its highly-technical profile, which is great.

Prague

We have recorded all the talks of the three tracks of the Embedded Linux Conference Europe (unfortunately, there wasn’t a similar video crew for the LinuxCon Europe conference which was taking place at the same time). Many of those videos should have a much higher audio quality than what we had in the past, since we could capture the audio directly for the conference room sound system. Unfortunately, one of our camcorders generates a loud noise when connected both to the audio system of the conference room and to the power adapter (this noise disappears when the camcorder is on battery). Therefore, not all conferences could be recorded with this improved audio quality. The encoding and upload of those videos has started on Sunday evening, just a few hours after landing in Toulouse when coming back from ELCE. The process is running 24/24 on two machines in parallel, and we therefore hope to be able to provide those videos online by the end of the week, or at worst at the beginning of next week.

Kernel Developer Panel
Kernel Developer Panel. From left to right: Linus Torvalds, Paul McKenney, Alan Cox, Thomas Gleixner and the moderator, Lennart Poettring

As we also announced, I gave two talks at this Embedded Linux Conference Europe event. One on Buildroot, titled Using Buildroot for real projects, which slides are available on the elinux.org site. More than 50 persons attended the conference which seems to indicate that there is interest around Buildroot. I had a few questions but unfortunately had to stop the conference after just 2/3 questions since I had exhausted my time slot. My second conference was titled Qt for non-graphical applications, and the slides are also available on the elinux.org site. About 45-50 persons attended the conference and in this case as well, I had to speak quite fast to make the 40+ slides discussion fit within the time slot allocated for the conference, which gave only the time for a few questions at the end. Generally speaking, these talks have attracted a nice number of attendees compared to many other talks I’ve seen, so it seems that all the preparation work was not done needlessly.

Nicolas Deschene (TI) and Loïc Minier (Linaro)
Nicolas Deschene (TI) and Loïc Minier (Linaro)

If you couldn’t attend ELCE and are waiting for the videos, I’m sure you’ll also be interested by the date and locations of the next editions of the conference :

  • The next Embedded Linux Conference, US edition, will take place on February 14-16 2012 in Redwood City, near San Francisco in California. This is an unusual date for the ELC (which traditionally took place in April), but it allows the conference to match with the Linaro Connect event for the first quarter of 2012.
  • The next Embedded Linux Conference Europe will take place on November 6-9 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. This is a just a ~4h drive from Toulouse, so definitely, several Bootlin people should be there.

Bootlin at Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011

The next Embedded Linux Conference Europe will take place from October 26th to October 28th in Prague, together with the first edition of LinuxCon Europe and just after the Kernel Summit, the GStreamer conference and the Real-time Linux workshop: it’s a really impressive concentration of interesting talks for embedded Linux developers. Linus Torvalds is already announced as a keynote speaker of the LinuxCon Europe.

ELCE 2011

As ELCE is a conference that embedded Linux developers simply can’t miss, the complete team of Bootlin will be there: my colleague and Bootlin founder Michael Opdenacker (Michael is part of the organization committee for this event), my engineer colleagues Grégory Clément and Maxime Ripard and myself, Thomas Petazzoni.

I will also have the chance to give two talks during this edition of ELCE:

  • Using Buildroot for real products. As Bootlin has used and is using Buildroot for multiple customer projects, this talk will share our experience on how to configure and setup Buildroot properly to build embedded Linux systems and include in a clean and nice way all of the specificities of each product.
  • Using Qt for non-graphical applications. Qt is often seen only as a graphical library, but it is in fact much more than that. Based on the experience of a customer project, this presentation will detail all the nice features that Qt offers to build embedded applications.

We highly recommend this conference to European embedded Linux developers and hope to meet some of our readers there! We will be the guys behind the video cameras in the embedded rooms. It’s worth mentioning that ELCE attendees are also granted, for free, the right to access LinuxCon Europe talks.

ELCE 2010 videos – Now in full HD

Videos from the Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Cambridge, UK, October 2010

Just a few weeks before the next edition of the Embedded Linux Conference in San Francisco, here are the videos from the previous edition in Europe a few months ago.

These videos took more time to process than expected, because of intense months on our side, but also because of the switch to the VP8 video codec. VP8 is the new Open Source and royalty free video codec, and is a successor to the codec that Theora was derived from. Unlike Theora which is now lagging behind, it is a very close competitor to H264, both in terms of quality and video size.

The switch to VP8 allowed us to release the videos in their original full HD resolution (we now have three full HD camcorders to shoot conference videos), with video files of about the same size.

You will probably need a recent GNU/Linux distribution (such as Ubuntu 10.10) to watch these videos. As this codec released by Google is taking off quickly, you should also find solutions to watch videos on Windows and MacOS X. Don’t hesitate to post comments here about your experience playing these files. You can even watch them on the Panda board, which can decode VP8 with its hardware video decoder.

As usual, these videos are released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution – ShareAlike Licence version 3.0.

As often in conferences, the videos were unfortunately shot is tough lighting conditions. The organizers usually turn off the lights to make it easier for the audience to read the screen. The consequence is a high contrast between the speaker and the screen, causing the speaker to appear very dark when we film her or him together with the screen. In a number of videos, we tried to solve this by using a beach mode provided by our camcorders. While the speaker now looks great, this unfortunately blurred the screen, causing more inconvenience than benefits. We gave up this mode in the last videos and will shoot ELC 2011 is the standard way, even if the speaker looks dark again. At least, with full HD videos, you will be able to read the slides directly on the screen.

The videos from the 2010 GStreamer conference will also be available in the next days, and to help you produce your own videos, we will release our new video processing scripts soon too.

Ruud DerwigVideo capture
Welcome speech
Video (15 minutes):
full HD (228M), 450×800 (71M)

Wolfram SangVideo capture
Pengutronix
Developer’s Diary: Supporting Maintainers
Slides
Video (46 minutes):
full HD (888M)
Rekha Kumar and Nipuna GunasekeraVideo capture
Texas Instruments
Panda board demonstration
Video (14 minutes):
full HD (373M), 450×800 (85M)

Robert SchusterVideo capture
OpenJDK
OpenJDK for Embedded Linux Devices
Slides
Video (39 minutes):
full HD (947M), 450×800 (225M)
Philippe RobinVideo capture
Linaro
Facilitating Open Source Development and Collaboration
Slides
Video (46 minutes):
full HD (548M), 450×800 (160M)
Tim BirdVideo capture
Sony
Android System Programming – Tips and Tricks
Slides
Video (40 minutes):
full HD (471M), 450×800 (142M)
Mischa Jonker and Ruud DerwigVideo capture
Synopsys
Portability is for People Who Cannot Write New Programs – GNU/Linux/OS on ARC
Slides
Video (34 minutes):
full HD (517M), 450×800 (148M)
Leif LindholmVideo capture
ARM
Software Considerations When Using High-Performance Memory Systems
Slides
Video (46 minutes):
full HD (511M), 450×800 (153M)
Ravi Sankar GunturVideo capture
Samsung
A Simple Method to Detect Memory Leaks and Buffer Overruns
Slides
Video (17 minutes):
full HD (171M), 450×800 (55M)
Will NewtonVideo capture
Imagination Technologies
Exploiting On-chip Memories in Embedded Linux Applications
Slides
Video (20 minutes):
full HD (255M), 450×800 (68M)
Andrey FedotovVideo capture
AFSoft
Linux Application in Safety-Critical Environment: A Real-Life Example
Video (39 minutes):
full HD (304M), 450×800 (111M)

Anna DushistovaVideo capture
Mentor Graphics
Eclipse and Embedded Linux Developers: What It Can and What It Cannot Do For You
Slides
Video (31 minutes):
full HD (338M), 450×800 (112M)
Yoshitake KobayashiVideo capture
Toshiba
Linux Kernel Acceleration for Long-term Testing
Slides
Video (30 minutes):
full HD (249M), 450×800 (89M)
Ralf BaechleVideo capture
Wind River
Embedded Linux – The State of the Nation
Video (40 minutes):
full HD (375M), 450×800 (128M)

Jim ZemlinVideo capture
Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation and CELF
Video (21 minutes):
full HD (282M), 450×800 (71M)

Andrew MurrayVideo capture
MPC Data
The Right Approach to Minimal Boot Times
Slides
Video (41 minutes):
full HD (472M), 450×800 (149M)
Robert Schwebel and Sascha HauerVideo capture
Pengutronix
Barebox: Booting Linux Fast and Fancy
Slides
Video (45 minutes):
full HD (779M), 450×800 (192M)
Kevin HilmanVideo capture
Deep Root Systems
Runtime Power Management
Slides
Video (45 minutes):
full HD (780M), 450×800 (195M)
Michael OpdenackerVideo capture
Bootlin
Flash Filesystem Benchmarks
Slides
Video (47 minutes):
full HD (937M), 450×800 (229M)
Ari RauchVideo capture
Texas Instruments
The Dynamic Role of Open Linux Architectures in Today’s Mobile Landscape
Slides
Video (34 minutes):
full HD (789M), 450×800 (203M)
Benjamin GaignardVideo capture
ST-Ericsson
Android and GStreamer
Slides
Video (42 minutes):
full HD (432M), 450×800 (133M)
Hans VerkuilVideo capture
Tandberg
Supporting SoC Video Subsystems in Video4linux
Slides
Video (45 minutes):
full HD (424M), 450×800 (139M)
Benjamin ZoresVideo capture
Alcatel-Lucent
State of Multimedia in 2010’s Embedded Linux Devices
Slides
Video (45 minutes):
full HD (784M), 450×800 (219M)
Iago Toral QuirogaVideo capture
Igalia/Grilo
Grilo: Integrating Multimedia Content in Applications
Slides
Video (32 minutes):
full HD (515M), 450×800 (149M)
Jean-Paul SamanVideo capture
M2X BV
Porting VLC to TI DaVinci
Slides
Video (46 minutes):
full HD (516M), 450×800 (167M)
Stefan KostVideo capture
Nokia
Meego Multimedia
Slides
Video (37 minutes):
full HD (316M), 450×800 (105M)
Vitaly WoolVideo capture
Porting Legacy Code to Linux Userspace Driver Framework
Video (26 minutes):
full HD (400M), 450×800 (108M)

Martin MichlmayrVideo capture
Debian
Adapting Debian Installer to NAS and Other Consumer Devices
Slides
Video (21 minutes):
full HD (196M), 450×800 (62M)
Frank ScholzVideo capture
Android and Its Impact On Home Entertainment and Home Automation
Video (28 minutes):
full HD (347M), 450×800 (101M)

WookeyVideo capture
Yaffs
Yaffs updates
Slides
Video (27 minutes):
full HD (312M), 450×800 (95M)
Yann E. MorinVideo capture
Crosstool-ng
Crosstool-NG, A Cross-Toolchain Generator
Slides
Video (41 minutes):
full HD (1.1G), 450×800 (185M)
Armijn HemelVideo capture
Loohuis Consulting
Introducing the Binary Analysis Tool
Slides
Video (47 minutes):
full HD (507M), 450×800 (155M)
Kees-Jan DijkzeulVideo capture
Sioux Embedded Systems
A Gentle Introduction to Autotools
Slides
Video (41 minutes):
full HD (371M), 450×800 (124M)
Klaas Van GendVideo capture
Montavista
Deflating the Virtualization Hype in 3 Simple Steps
Slides
Video (38 minutes):
full HD (507M), 450×800 (131M)
Peter KorsgaardVideo capture
Buildroot
Do More With Less – On Driver-less Interfacing with Embedded Devices
Slides
Video (48 minutes):
full HD (529M), 450×800 (173M)
Ray KinsellaVideo capture
Intel
Xen in Embedded Systems
Slides
Video (34 minutes):
full HD (380M), 450×800 (135M)
Arnout VandecappelleVideo capture
Mind
Practical Testing of Open Source Embedded Systems
Slides
Video (51 minutes):
full HD (364M), 450×800 (160M)
Carmelo Amoroso and Rosario ContarinoVideo capture
STMicroelectronics
Lightweight Prelinker for Kernel Modules
Slides
Video (45 minutes):
full HD (302M), 450×800 (129M)
Frank RowandVideo capture
Sony
Identifying Embedded Real-Time Latency Issues: I-Cache and Locks
Slides
Video (43 minutes):
full HD (272M), 450×800 (120M)
David AndersVideo capture
Texas Instruments
Board Bringup: Methods and Utilities
Slides
Video (34 minutes):
full HD (248M), 450×800 (99M)
John OgnessVideo capture
Linutronix
IPL+UBI: Flexible and Reliable with Linux as the Bootloader
Slides
Video (27 minutes):
full HD (232M), 450×800 (89M)
Vitaly WoolVideo capture
WLAN Chips in Embedded Linux Systems
Video (23 minutes):
full HD (264M), 450×800 (82M)

Grant LikelyVideo capture
Secret Lab Technologies
ARM Flattened Device Tree Status Report
Slides
Video (40 minutes):
full HD (542M), 450×800 (173M)
Koen KooiVideo capture
OpenEmbedded
The State of OpenEmbedded and Tooling to Make Life Easier
Slides
Video (44 minutes):
full HD (308M), 450×800 (122M)
Harald WelteVideo capture
OpenBSC
Running your own GSM+GPRS network using OpenBSC, OsmoSGSN and OpenGGSN
Slides
Video (49 minutes):
full HD (402M), 450×800 (163M)
Arun RaghavanVideo capture
Collabora
PulseAudio In The Embedded World
Slides
Video (30 minutes):
full HD (204M), 450×800 (88M)
Jake EdgeVideo capture
LWN.net
Understanding Threat Models for Embedded Devices
Slides
Video (29 minutes):
full HD (186M), 450×800 (80M)
Gustavo F. PadovanVideo capture
Profusion
The Linux Bluetooth Stack
Slides
Video (30 minutes):
full HD (213M), 450×800 (87M)
Klaas van GendVideo capture
Closing session
Video (62 minutes):
full HD (1.2G), 450×800 (285M)

Chris SimmondsVideo capture
2net
The Embedded Linux Quick Start Guide – Part 1
Slides
Video (52 minutes):
full HD (397M)
Chris SimmondsVideo capture
2net
The Embedded Linux Quick Start Guide – Part 2
Slides
Video (79 minutes):
full HD (660M)
Chris SimmondsVideo capture
2net
The Embedded Linux Quick Start Guide – Part 3
Slides
Video (67 minutes):
full HD (501M)
Chris SimmondsVideo capture
2net
What else can you do with Android? – Part 1
Slides
Video (49 minutes):
full HD (432M), 450×800 (144M)
Chris SimmondsVideo capture
2net
What else can you do with Android? – Part 2
Slides
Video (31 minutes):
full HD (293M), 450×800 (94M)
Chris SimmondsVideo capture
2net
What else can you do with Android? – Part 3
Slides
Video (59 minutes):
full HD (545M), 450×800 (180M)

Here are also videos of the Embedded Linux and Android tutorials by Chris Simmonds.

ELC Europe 2010 sessions announced

List of sessions and speakers at ELC Europe in Cambridge, UK

Cambridge, UKBeing a member of the organization committee of the Embedded Linux Conference Europe, I get access to fresh news about this yearly conference. The call for presentations is now over and we have just announced the list of sessions.

Note that this list is not the final one yet. Some speakers haven’t confirmed their participation or haven’t sent their biographies yet. There are also two or three speakers added at the last minute who are not listed yet.

The conference will happen in Cambridge, UK, on October 27-28, 2010. Keep an eye on the website (or on our blog). Registration should open in a few days from now, and all practical details will be given then.

See also the agenda of the GStreamer conference which will happen at the same location on the day before.

Location of Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2010 announced

Cambridge, UKWhile the American Embedded Linux Conference always takes place in the San Francisco area in California, the European Embedded Linux Conference Europe travels each year in a different country across Europe: it took place in Austria in 2007, in the Netherlands in 2008 and in France in 2009. The location for the 2010 edition of ELCE has been announced recently: it will take place on October 27th and 28th in Cambridge, United Kingdom. As usual there will be many talks, Bird-of-a-Feather sessions, technical demonstrations and more. If you’re an embedded Linux developer in Europe, you should definitely ask your employer to send you to this conference!

Presentations on the following topics are encouraged: audio, video, and graphics systems for embedded products, security, system size, boot-up time, meeting real-time constraints, power management, streaming media, flash memory devices and filesystems, technologies related to cell phones, digital set top boxes, handheld devices, or other CE products, development tools for embedded users, use of Linux in actual products, practical experience and war stories, standards for CE products. The proposal must be received by June, 30th. My colleague Michael Opdenacker, founder of Bootlin, is a member of the program committee.

On the day before, note that there will also be an interesting event: GStreamer Conference 2010. As GStreamer is a key component of today’s multimedia systems based on embedded Linux. Staying in Cambridge for three days instead of two could then make a lot of sense.

ELCE 2009 videos

Videos from the Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Grenoble, October 2009

ELCE 2009Just a few weeks before the next edition of the Embedded Linux Conference in San Francisco, here are the videos from the previous edition in Europe a few months ago.

These videos were shot by Satoru Ueda and Tim Bird (Sony), Ruud Derwig (NXP) and by Thomas Petazzoni and Michael Opdenacker (Bootlin). As usual, they are released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution – ShareAlike Licence version 3.0.

Ruud DerwigIf you have never been to an Embedded Linux Conference yet, these videos should show you how useful this conference is for embedded Linux system developers. This is the place where you can discover new development tools and technologies that will change your working life, benefit from the experience from your peers, get the opportunity to talk to the fantastic people who implement the Free and Open Source software that makes your system run, and win cool penguin goodies. So, don’t miss next next edition in San Francisco.

Bootlin at ELCE 2009

Grenoble

As usual, we won’t miss this year’s edition of the Embedded Linux Conference Europe, which has always been a great source of information and encounters for embedded Linux developers.

Here are details about our involvement this year.

  • I am part of the organization committee, in particular the coordinator for the Technical Showcase.
  • Taking advantage of his stay in Grenoble, my colleague Thomas Petazzoni will make an embedded Linux presentation on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 7:30 pm, at GUILDE, the local Linux user group.
  • Thomas and I will be present at the Embedded Systems Exhibition on Wednesday, Oct. 14, sharing a booth with our partner CALAO Systems. The exhibition entry is free of charge, and this will be an excellent opportunity to meet us and have enough time to talk about your topics of interest.
  • Thomas will lead the Buildroot BOF with Peter Korsgaard, Buildroot’s maintainer, at 5:35 pm on Thursday, Oct. 15. This informal session will allow users and developers to meet and exchange ideas.
  • I will be the leader of the Small Business BOF on Thursday 15 at 6:35 pm, an informal session for small embedded Linux companies interested in sharing experience and best practices, and of course to know each other better.
  • I will make a presentation on boot time reduction techniques, at 3:40 on Friday, Oct. 16.
  • Albin Tonnerre, who was an intern at Bootlin this summer, will participate to the Technical Showcase at 12:00 am on Friday, Oct. 16, showing the benefits of LZO decompression on kernel boot time. During his internship, Albin made very nice contributions to boot time reduction, power management on AT91 and to U-boot board support.
  • Thomas Petazzoni will also participate to the Technical Showcase at the same time, showing Buidroot’s new features.
  • We will videotape the conferences we go to and will release the videos later on our website.
  • Thomas organizes a Buildroot developer day on Saturday, Oct. 17, allowing developers to meet and code together. Bootlin will offer lunch to the participants, and the room will be offered by CALAO Systems. There are no more seats left for space reasons.

Hope to see you in Grenoble!

First Buildroot Developer Day after ELCE, on October 17th in Grenoble, France

Buildroot logoThe first Buildroot Developer Day will take place on Saturday, October 17th in Grenoble, France, just the day after Embedded Linux Conference Europe. This Developer Day aims at allowing Buildroot developers to meet and exchange ideas on the project and its future.

As the number of places is limited, interested candidates are invited to send an e-mail to Peter Korsgaard (jacmet at uclibc dot org) and Thomas Petazzoni (thomas dot petazzoni at free-electrons dot com).

Peter Korsgaard and I are organizing this Developer Day thanks to the sponsorship of Calao Systems (offering the location for the meeting) and Bootlin (offering free lunch to the participants).

See also the announcement of the mailing list and on Buildroot website.

Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2009 program

GrenobleAs we announced a few months ago, Embedded Linux Conference 2009 will take place in Grenoble, France on October 15th and 16th. The list of sessions has just been published online, and as usual, it is a very exciting list of in-depth technical talks.

Because of my involvement in Buildroot, I’m particularly interested in the numerous talks about embedded Linux build systems: Florian Fainelli will talk about OpenWRT (which is not only dedicated to Wifi routers, but is a generic embedded Linux build system, built as a fork of Buildroot), Gordon Hecker on e2factory (a build system I’ve never heard of until now, but conferences are great to discover new tools and projects), Cedric Hombourger on OpenEmbedded (I will be particularly happy to meet Cedric again since I had the chance to work with him six years ago), Marcin Jusziewicz on OpenEmbedded again, Robert Schwebel on PTXdist and finally Alex de Vries on what seems to be a more generic talk about build systems.

Of course, besides build systems, a lot of other topics will be covered. I’ve noted things such as the talk on Canola by Gustavo Barbieri, the boot time presentation by Grégory Clément, the device tree talks by Wolfram Sang and Vitaly Wool, the talk by Alessandro Rubini in order to meet one of the author of Linux Device Drivers, the power management and clock management talks also.

Bootlin will obviously be present during this conference :

  • Michael Opdenacker, my colleague, will give a talk entitled Update on boot time reduction techniques
  • Michael, again, will be the chair of a Small Business BOF, which should allow small companies offering services around embedded Linux to meet and exchange their ideas and experience
  • Finally, I will be the co-chair with Peter Korsgaard of a BOF on Buildroot
  • We will share a booth with our partner Calao Systems during the Minalogic Embedded Systems Exhibition. This will be another opportunity to meet.

I hope to see you in October at ELCE !