Today, when we talk about "em-bedded" systems, we are actually covering over 70% of all the systems that designers build. Even desktop computers are a kind of embedded system. There are at least three to five additional CPUs/microcontrollers in the computer and related peripherals to handle disk-drive control, keyboard decoding, printer control, and more. This ubiquity has caused us to conduct a little self-examination. As a result, we will be expanding our coverage of embedded systems by integrating our two-year-old Embedded Systems Development magazine into the pages of Electronic Design.
This expansion will take place in January of 2001. The publication of Embedded Systems Development, however, will cease after its October issue to give our staff the necessary time to transition all of the work and finalize how it will appear in Electronic Design.
In some ways this is an obvious step forward. Over the last few years, advances in system-on-a-chip designs and the use of processor cores has made almost every complex digital chip an embedded system. Furthermore, many mixed-signal chips are starting to incorporate on-chip intelligence, so even designers in the analog realm are building embedded systems.
This proliferation of embedded intelligence into almost every area that Electronic Design covers has led us to believe that we should expand our coverage of embedded system design. Therefore, we're redoubling our efforts to provide you with the most extensive coverage of embedded technologies.
We're creating a new section in Electronic Design that will focus entirely on developments related to the embedded marketplace. This monthly magazine-within-a-magazine, entitled EMBEDDED In Electronic Design, will contain staff-written articles covering design issues, application articles showing how to sharpen your design techniques, plus new product developments.
Spearheading this effort will be our new Senior Technology Editor, Ray Weiss, a writer who has extensively covered the embedded system market for the last two decades. A degreed engineer as well as a prolific hardware and software developer, Ray will be working closely with our Embedded Technology and Software Editor, Bill Wong, to help shape the content for this new section and define new story formats.
I hope you agree that we're moving forward by integrating Embedded Systems Development into our pages. We have many exciting ideas that you will witness as we roll out the new section in Electronic Design next year. But, we're always open to suggestions.
As a designer of embedded systems, this will be your section, too. What types of embedded technology and design would you like to see that Electronic Design or Embedded Systems Development has yet to cover? What areas should we explore more? Send me your feedback.