Skills

The right technologies and the know-how to harness them

Engineers within Tematic have core competence in all manner of ARM software and hardware technology with experience working with: ARM2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, StrongARM, and XScale.

Our strong in-house hardware development team has the skills and experience to take a commercial design all the way from the drawing board to the consumer across a broad range of consumer electronics devices, from niche products for vertical markets to extremely low-cost, high volume products.

Many engineers' skill sets overlap leading to a blur in the definition between software and hardware, this promotes a diverse field of knowledge and swift problem solving environment

Software

Software technologies from which a project can draw include:

• real-time operating system design
• run-time and in field upgrading
• support for generic PCI based controllers such as OHCI USB root hubs
• guaranteed compatibility with the entire ARM family
• standards based, giving compatibility with a wide range of popular systems
• TCP/IP stack with streaming media optimisations
• DHCP
• Samba and NFS networking
• low bitrate video playback codecs (MPEG 2/4)

Projects will also benefit from a valuable range of software skills:

• hand optimisation for maximum performance and memory footprint
• image processing and enhancement
• user interface design using methods from conventional keyboard/mouse to more abstract paradigms such as touchscreens and wireless handsets
• coding mathematical algorithms in ARM assembler for best performance
• experience in all software fields from low level device drivers to user facing applications

Hardware

Hardware technologies from which a project can draw include:

• schematic capture (Protel and Mentor Graphics systems)
• 2, 4, 6, and 8 layer PCB technology
• strict PCB design rules to ensure design for manufacturability and to aid EMC compliance
• microcontroller design to offload pressure from the main CPU, for example including expertise in PIC, 8051, 6502 and 68000 microcontrollers, to help guarantee a grade of service
• custom glue logic design using CPLDs or equivalent (Lattice and Xilinx parts)
• analogue and high speed digital design
• audio and video circuitry design
• analogue filter simulation
• BGA and fBGA technology
• procurement of ICT fixtures for manufacture
• secure EN55022 and relevant electrical safety approvals
• 802.3 Ethernet variants and V90/V92 POTS telephony

Toolset

Development may proceed using any of these tools:

• C/C++
• ARM assembler
• scripting languages such as awk, ECMAScript, Perl, assorted flavours of BASIC
• microcontroller assembler (as and where appropriate)
• executables delivered in binary, ELF or AIF format
• Abel and VHDL for hardware logic design