McObject’s eXtremeDB Rocks in JVC’s New Portable Music Player21 October 2005
JVC’s adoption of the tiny-footprint, real-time eXtremeDB in its digital audio player represents an important new customer for McObject, and showcases eXtremeDB’s growing role in making consumer electronics products more competitive. In addition to delivering music instantly in the JVC Alneo XA HD500, eXtremeDB supports longer playback and a lower manufacturing cost for the device. These benefits—support for enhanced product capabilities and a reduced bill-of-materials cost—have driven eXtremeDB’s inclusion recently in consumer gear ranging from Siemens mobile telephones to Alcatel set-top boxes.
Early on, the JVC engineers determined they could reduce time-to-market and enhance run-time efficiency within the MP3 player with a commercial, off-the-shelf database management system (DBMS). The developers first explored integrating a traditional (on-disk) DBMS, but concluded the on-disk database’s caching requirements required excessive RAM, which would unacceptably increase their device’s component cost or reduce the number of songs the device could manage.
In addition to minimizing memory demands, manufacturers of portable music players seek to incorporate less powerful CPUs in the devices, to further reduce cost. To extend battery life, CPU cycles must be dramatically minimized. To deliver the required real-time performance, the on-disk database would be cached in RAM. But even when entirely cached, the on-disk database would carry out I/O, cache management and other CPU-intensive logic that is inherent to on-disk databases yet irrelevant in an all-in-memory deployment.
In contrast, eXtremeDB’s all-in-memory architecture eliminates caching, disk I/O and other irrelevant logic. JVC’s engineers found McObject’s streamlined approach to data management dramatically reduced CPU and memory demands, contributing to lower manufacturing costs and increasing the device’s capacity.
“Data management is central to digital audio players, which are really walking music databases, offering instant access to thousands of songs. And while the data management tasks are mostly straightforward, these devices’ severe memory and CPU constraints present resource-efficiency demands that are extreme even for consumer electronics,” McObject CEO and co-founder Steve Graves said.
“We are pleased that eXtremeDB proved a good fit for JVC’s Alneo XA HD500 digital audio player, as it has for a growing list of real-time intelligent devices that manage increasing volumes of more complex data,” Graves said.
“The new JVC Alneo XA HD500 digital audio player introduces best-in-category features including studio quality audio, the longest playback in its class, menu display in 18 languages, and Digital Surround sound with four distinct acoustic modes. To support this level of innovation, JVC has taken bold steps technologically, including the first-ever integration of a full-featured database within a portable music player. That database is McObject’s fast, small-footprint eXtremeDB,” a JVC engineer said.
JVC plans a November 2005 release of the Alneo XA HD500 digital audio player in Japan, followed by introduction in North America.
About eXtremeDB
With eXtremeDB, McObject offers a highly portable database management system that meets the unique performance requirements and resource constraints of intelligent, connected devices. eXtremeDB provides critical data management features—including transactions, concurrent access, High Availability and a high-level data definition language—while maintaining a tiny code footprint (as little as 50K). As an in-memory database system (IMDS), eXtremeDB delivers the real-time responsiveness demanded by consumer electronics, network infrastructure gear, industrial control systems and other embedded systems.
eXtremeDB also provides sophisticated development capabilities, such as support for complex data and varied query methods, a powerful debugging environment including a self-diagnostic API that catches a wide range of common programming errors before they slip into runtime code, and an optional SQL programming interface.
About McObject
Founded by embedded database and real-time systems experts, McObject offers proven data management technology that makes intelligent devices smarter, more reliable and more cost-effective to develop and maintain. McObject counts among its customers industry leaders such as DaimlerChrysler, EADS, Tyco Thermal Controls, F5 Networks, Genesis Microchip, Motorola and Boeing. McObject, based in Issaquah, WA, is committed to providing innovative technology and first rate services to customers and partners. The company can be reached at +1-425-831-5964, or visit www.mcobject.com.
McObject and eXtremeDB are registered trademarks of McObject LLC. All other company or product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Source: EMEDIAWIRE
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Related Articles
|
