The show floor at the upcoming
Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco, the world’s largest
exhibition
of the core technologies for intelligent electronics, will feature
hundreds
of products used by engineers, designing the latest in Internet
Appliances,
Systems-on-Chip and smart industrial machines. Critical tools and
technologies that enable communications and networking connectivity in
everyday devices will be among the many new products unveiled at this
industry-leading event, running from April 10-12 at the Moscone Center.

The show floor at the twelfth annual Embedded Systems Conference
features
341 exhibitors, including 118 San Francisco Bay Area companies. This
year,
the exhibit floor will also feature the “Innovation Showcase,” an
exhibition of the newest end-user products powered by embedded systems.

“It’s not that we’re all going to be browsing web-sites from our
toasters,
but we’re going to see an increasing number of products that
incorporate
the communications capability of the Internet in very interesting
ways,”
said Lindsey Vereen, Conference Director. “You can see some great
examples
of this at the Innovation Showcase and on the show floor, where there
will
be demonstrations of the chips and software that will enable next
generation functionality.”

A number of intelligent devices are featured in the event’s first
Innovation Showcase. These include:

• A Mobile Web Pad
• A Multimedia Electronic Book
• An Internet-Enabled Espresso Maker
• New Digital Music Players, including portable and home stereo devices
• A Network-Enabled Fingerprint Security System
• An Internet Appliance that allows small and remote offices to share
  Internet access, files, printers, and network services

Hundreds of the products that are used to create these types of devices
will be demonstrated on the show floor. Among the newest products, are
tools used to add connectivity to embedded devices, such as:

• Application specific Bluetooth front-end solutions
• Components for the implementation of voice over DSL
• CAN (Controller Area Network) products, which link electronic
  networks in
  automobiles and on manufacturing plant floors.
• An embedded Ethernet and storage module
  <.li> Middleware for deterministic IP data delivery without complex
  programming

The show floor will also feature a broad range of products to build
software applications including Linux and cross-platform development
tools. Examples include Linux-based PDA software, web browsers and a
real
time operating system; an integrated tool for programmers working with
Windows CE and Linux; and software to link Linux devices to
Windows-based
enterprise systems.

Another category of products featured on the show floor is
System-on-Chip
(SoC) devices and the tools used to create them, including a real-time,
low
power Java Processor; a streamlined processor core with low gate count
and
a single stage pipeline; a System-on-Chip device with integrated
Ethernet
controller; and a solution for multi-core SoC simulation and debugging.

“System-on-Chip is the natural result of the electronics industry’s
capability to shrink nearly every key component to smaller and smaller
sizes and put them on a single die,” said Vereen. “Consumer benefits
of
high integration and small size are more features in a smaller package,
higher reliability, and less power consumption. Integrating software
into
Systems-on-Chip is still a challenge, but exhibitors at ESC are
starting to
address this market.”

The ESC exhibition is held in conjunction with the world’s most
comprehensive educational program on embedded systems. With 186
courses
and 15-full day tutorials, including 95 entirely new sessions, the
conference program highlights topics such as design of wireless
devices,
development of distributed systems, and open-source design tools and
operating systems.

Special events include keynote addresses, a panel discussion and
exhibitor
workshops. Best-selling author of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy,”
Douglas Adams and Sun Microsystems Java technology inventor James
Gosling
and his colleague Greg Bollella present the keynotes. A panel
discussion
titled, “Object-Oriented Programming: Method or Madness,” is offered on
Monday, April 9 at 5:00 p.m. Additionally, Cadence Design Systems and
Microsoft Corporation are offering special exhibitor workshops on
Tuesday
through Thursday. Advance sign-up and payment is required for these
hands-on product-oriented classes.

More information on the Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco is
available at http://www.embedded.com/esc. Conference programs can also
be
obtained by calling 877-446-7799 or by e-mailing esc@cmp.com.

The Embedded Systems Conference is produced by CMP Media Inc. and is
sponsored by EMBEDDED SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING magazine and ELECTRONIC
ENGINEERING TIMES. Other conferences produced by CMP’s Electronics
Trade
Show Group include the Embedded Systems Conference-Chicago, the
Embedded
Systems Conference-Boston, the Embedded Systems Conference-Europe, the
Embedded Executive Summit, and the Communications Design Conference.

About CMP Media Inc.Z
CMP Media Inc. (Nasdaq: UNEWY) is a leading high-tech media company
providing essential information and marketing services to the entire
technology spectrum – the builders, sellers and users of technology
worldwide. Capitalizing on its editorial strength, CMP is uniquely
positioned to offer marketers comprehensive, integrated media solutions
tailored to meet their individual needs. Its diverse products and
services
include newspapers, magazines, Internet products, research, direct
marketing services, education and training, trade shows and
conferences,
custom publishing, testing and consulting. More information can be
found
at www.cmpnet.com.

Note: All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective
owners.

Attendee Contact: CMP Media Inc.
Toll free: 1/877-446-7799
E-mail: esc@cmp.com

A reader writes: “If you go to Napster’s Web site you will find Napster’s latest strategic move, a call to the populace to attend an organized rally on the steps of capital hill in support. The gathering will happen April 3rd, just before their hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Afterwards there is a after-hearing concert with several ‘unamed’ Napster supporting artists. Hmmmm …. Courtney Love or The Offsping anybody? The

story’s at mp3newswire.net.

This is PC World’s take on Microsoft vision for its Windows XP. “Taking the first steps in an ambitious attempt to
gradually shift the entire computer industry over
to a single, unified operating system, Microsoft
Tuesday released a beta 2 version of its Windows
XP operating system.”

From LWN.net: licq is a very popular ICQ graphical client.
Previous versions have two vulnerabilities that could be exploited by
a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the client host.
The first vulnerability is a buffer overflow in a log function.
The second vulnerability consists in the use of the system() function
to invoke an external browser when an URL is received. This function
will expand and interpret shell characters and this could be used to
execute commands on behalf of the user running licq.

From LinuxPR: Three members of the PHP development
project’s core steering group have joined the elite Great Bridge advisory
committee, Great Bridge announced today. Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of the PHP
server-side scripting language; Thies Arntzen, an expert in PHP-database
connectivity; and Sascha Schumann, co-author of a leading PHP book,
Professional PHP Programming, will join the group of developers advising the
company best known for its support of the PostgreSQL database. The move
demonstrates Great Bridge’s commitment to full integration of open source PHP
and PostgreSQL to create powerful building blocks for dynamic,
database-driven Web sites.

From LWN.net: Users could embed malicious VIM control codes into a file, and as soon
as any user opened that file in vim-enhanced or vim-X11 with the status
line option enabled in .vimrc, the commands would be executed as that
user.

From The Register: “There is indeed more than meets the eye to Blade, the WinXP server edition
Microsoft introduced as a ‘possibility’ at WinHEC yesterday … It’s what they’re designed to kill that’s most interesting though — it’s Linux. And
maybe they’re supposed to screw Intel over as well, but we’ll get back to that.
Blade servers are intended to be cheap, slam-in-and-go boxes that Web hosting
operations can just peel off the roll (almost) and shove in whenever they need more
server capacity. Now, think about where Linux is really strong, and at the same time
think (fairly, mind) about how good Microsoft is at observing, defining and
analysing the competition.”

ZDNet reports on Caldera’s unveiling of its Linux-Unix hybrid Open Unix 8, which allows Linux applications to run on the Unix kernel Caldera is inheriting with its purchase of SCO.

From LinuxPR: Dr. Larry M. Augustin, founder and CEO of VA Linux Systems (which owns NewsForge, by the way) will deliver a keynote address, “The SourceForge Effect and Other
Tales from the Open Source Enterprise,” which will discuss how Open Source
infrastructure is expanding market share in the enterprise.

From LinuxPR: Ximian is currently conducting a brief survey of end users to find out how they
are using Linux and what changes they think will make Linux more usable. The
survey also addresses how Linux compares with Windows and which changes
to Linux might enhance its appeal to a wider audience.

The survey is accessible at survey.ximian.com (Ed: actually, it’s at http://infopoll.net/Live/surveys/s11518.htm?6), and results will be published by
May 1st on the Ximian web site(www.ximian.com). Additionally, Ximian will
award a DVD player to a lucky respondent. The survey requires JavaScript.