SEGGER Blog

Securing embedded systems with digital signatures: The basics

Written by Martin Baldwin on May 25th, 2022May 25th, 2022.

Securing an embedded system is incredibly important and having a digital signature plays a crucial role in that. A digital signature confirms that a specific piece of information came from a specific organization (i.e. the one with the private key as described below) and has not been modified.

Follow-up articles will firstly cover related issues such as how to secure and handle your private key, why this is so important, and how SEGGER does it. After that, articles will address how digital signatures are applied to solve particular problems, who stands to benefit, and what the costs are.

This article discusses the basic principles of how to secure your embedded system.
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C++ real-time allocation — a chess engine

Written by Paul Curtis on March 22nd, 2022March 23rd, 2022.

This article describes a new capability that I added to SEGGER emRun, now available in Embedded Studio 6, to support real-time dynamic storage allocation. These enhancements were inspired during my development of a chess engine, and I’ll describe some of the engine design and why emRun now offers a new allocator.

Hacking emSecure?

Written by Rolf Segger on February 25th, 2022February 28th, 2022.

On October 24th of 2021, we were contacted by the Moscow based security company BI.ZONE Research Lab. BI.ZONE is a security research firm, checking software and computer systems for vulnerabilities. They were trying to find weaknesses in J-Link.

Algorithms for division – part 4 – Using Newton’s method

Written by Paul Curtis on December 2nd, 2021February 9th, 2022.

In the previous article I presented an algorithm for division by calculating a reciprocal. This article presents a way to calculate the reciprocal, rather than looking it up, trading size of lookup table against speed of calculation.

Algorithms for division – part 3 – Using multiplication

Written by Paul Curtis on November 29th, 2021December 1st, 2021.

We’ve explored simple algorithms that develop a quotient one digit at a time: reliable, understandable, but ultimately quite slow. Now it’s time to change up a couple of gears and turbocharge division for speed!

Saving power in embedded systems – Reducing idle CPU speed

Written by Martin Baldwin on November 17th, 2021November 17th, 2021.

Dynamic power, meaning power consumption that is proportional to a clock speed, is a significant part of the power usage of a computer system. Reducing CPU load is one way to reduce this. More interestingly, reducing CPU clock speed in idle mode is another way. And there is hardly any downside!

Algorithms for division – part 2 – Classics

Written by Paul Curtis on October 17th, 2021November 28th, 2021.

This article will explore the classic division algorithms and how they can be implemented efficiently, in terms of code space and execution time, by exploiting machine features. Don’t expect anything astounding here, the algorithms are classic for a reason: this path is well-trodden.

Algorithms for division – part 1

Written by Paul Curtis on October 11th, 2021February 9th, 2022.

This is the first in a series of articles that attempt to dispel the mystique around division algorithms. We do this by presenting coded algorithms that correctly divide, and describe how variations of these algorithms are used in emRun and emFloat, our C runtime and floating-point libraries.

emWeb: User interface in the web browser

Written by Leon Gruener on September 2nd, 2021October 6th, 2021.

Recently at SEGGER, we released a brand new product: the Flasher Hub. During development it became clear that the Flasher Hub needed an easy user interface for monitoring and configuration. The device itself is headless: No display and limited resources. Years of experience with web interfaces used in our J-Links and Flashers made our decision easy. […]

Risks Are Often Underestimated — It Is Not Only the Chip Crisis that Threatens Embedded Manufacturers

Written by Frank Riemenschneider on June 17th, 2021February 10th, 2022.

With the chip crisis and the standstill of assembly lines in the automotive industry, supplier management has become a hot topic. Beyond the repeated shortage of semiconductors, there are other risks worth taking into consideration when selecting suppliers. The quality of a supplier for embedded hardware and software can determine the success or failure of […]