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„The only way to achieve the extraordinary is to believe that the impossible is possible." (Bertrand Russell, British philosopher & mathematician)
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 Newsletter in November - SEGGER: Three New Features for Embedded Developers:
emWin: Scalable Vector Fonts with Low Memory Requirements
emFile: Support for Alliance Memory AS5F Serial NAND Flash
J-Link and Flasher: Support for Infineon PSOC Control C3 - Percepio VIEW: Understanding Real-Time Behavior - for FREE
- Percepio PROFILE: Greater Insight into Timing, Memory & Application Data
- DETECT 2026.1: Continuous Observability now also for Zephyr RTOS
- Small Improvements, Big Impact
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Technological progress does not always come in the form of entirely new technologies.
Often, it is enhancements to existing solutions that make a noticeable difference for developers: a new feature that saves memory, support for an additional hardware component, or a tool that makes previously complex analysis tasks more accessible.
Such improvements may seem relatively minor at first glance. In everyday development work, however, they can make a real difference.
As embedded systems grow increasingly complex, it becomes more important to use available resources efficiently, identify problems early, and make the most of proven development tools.
What's new at SEGGER and Percepio - and what opportunities do these developments offer for your projects? This month, we look at new possibilities for embedded graphics, flash memory, and microcontrollers, as well as better ways to understand the actual runtime behavior of real-time software.
As always, we're primarily interested in one question: What does this mean, specifically, for your development work?
Let's take a closer look at what's new.
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SEGGER: Three new Features for Embedded Developers Not every product enhancement calls for a major announcement. Sometimes, targeted improvements to proven components are precisely what makes development work easier.
Three recent updates from SEGGER illustrate just how varied these improvements can be.
SEGGER emWin:
Scalable Vector Fonts with Low Memory Requirements
Clear, attractive user interfaces have long become an important part of embedded devices.
However, displaying scalable fonts can be challenging, particularly on systems with limited memory. Different font sizes and display resolutions need to be supported without consuming unnecessary flash or RAM.
With its new scalable vector fonts, SEGGER offers a memory-efficient alternative to conventional TrueType font rendering using FreeType in its emWin graphics library.
Font sizes can be changed at runtime. Developers can also limit the character set to the glyphs actually required by their application, further reducing memory consumption.
This is particularly useful for devices that need a flexible graphical user interface but have limited hardware resources.
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SEGGER emFile:
Support for Alliance Memory AS5F Serial NAND Flash
Flash memory is an essential component of modern embedded systems.
Whether storing configuration data, measurement results, or larger amounts of information, a reliable file system must be able to handle the specific characteristics of the underlying storage technology.
SEGGER has extended its emFile file system to support Alliance Memory's AS5F family of serial NAND flash devices.
The Flash Translation Layer handles important tasks such as bad-block management, wear leveling, and error correction.
For developers, this means greater flexibility when selecting suitable flash memory devices without having to manage the underlying complexities of NAND technology themselves.
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SEGGER J-Link und Flasher:
Support for Infineon PSOC Control C3
New microcontrollers also require suitable development and production tools.
SEGGER therefore continuously extends the device support provided by its debug probes and flash programming solutions.
The latest addition is the Infineon PSOC Control C3 Performance Line, based on Arm Cortex-M33 and designed particularly for motor control and power conversion applications.
With support from J-Link and Flasher, developers can integrate these microcontrollers into their debugging and programming workflows and continue using proven SEGGER tools with their new hardware designs.
This also helps simplify the transition from development to programming devices in production.
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Percepio VIEW: Understanding Real-Time Behavior - for FREE
When embedded software does not behave as expected, recognizing that something is wrong is often easier than finding the underlying cause.
This can be particularly challenging in applications using a real-time operating system. Multiple tasks execute concurrently, interrupts affect timing, and the behavior of the overall system cannot always be fully understood through traditional source-level debugging alone.
What is actually happening on the processor? Which tasks are running, and when? Where do unexpected delays or interactions occur?
This is where runtime visualization comes in.
With Percepio View, developers have access to a free tool from Percepio based on proven Tracealyzer technology that enables visual examination of task execution and RTOS events.
Instead of relying exclusively on individual breakpoints or log output, developers can examine how different system activities interact over time.
This makes it easier to identify unusual behavior, understand relationships between events, and investigate potential causes more effectively.
What makes View particularly attractive is its simple, free starting point: Developers can discover the benefits of visual runtime analysis without immediately needing a more comprehensive analysis solution.
After all, understanding what a system actually does is the first step toward knowing how to improve it.
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Percepio PROFILE:
Deeper Insight into Timing, Memory and Application Data
Visualizing task execution is a valuable first step. However, more complex applications often raise additional questions.
How does CPU utilization change over longer periods? Which threads consume the most processing time? How does memory usage develop? And how do internal application data relate to the runtime behavior being observed?
For these tasks, Percepio Profile provides additional analysis capabilities.
One important enhancement is Live Trace Streaming. Trace data is transferred while the application is running, allowing developers to analyze longer periods of execution without relying solely on the limited capacity of a local trace buffer.
Profile also provides more detailed information about individual thread timing, along with capabilities for analyzing memory usage.
Another particularly useful feature is the graphical visualization of application data. This allows developers not only to see when specific activities occur but also to examine how relevant application values change in relation to runtime events.
These capabilities provide additional ways to investigate performance problems, timing deviations, and unexpected system behavior.
Percepio View and Profile share a common goal: Runtime behavior should not only be measurable but, above all, understandable.
While View provides an easy introduction to visual RTOS analysis, Profile extends the possibilities for more detailed investigations over longer periods.
For developers who want to explore the behavior of complex real-time systems in even greater depth, Percepio Tracealyzer offers a comprehensive solution for visual runtime analysis.
Tracealyzer's advanced analysis and visualization capabilities help developers systematically investigate complex interactions, timing dependencies, and hard-to-find root causes.
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Percepio DETECT 2026.1: Continuous Observability now available for Zephyr RTOS
The basic idea is that embedded software should not be observed only during individual debugging sessions. Instead, insights into its actual runtime behavior should also be collected during integration and testing and fed back into the development process.
With Percepio Detect 2026.1, this approach is now being extended to another important RTOS platform.
The new version supports Zephyr RTOS, enabling automatic detection and diagnosis of unusual runtime events in Zephyr-based systems.
Rather than continuously recording all trace data, Detect monitors the system and selectively captures diagnostic information when anomalies, defined triggers, or faults occur.
These recordings may include trace data, logs, and core dumps.
The collected information can then be examined using Tracealyzer and the integrated Core Dump Viewer to better understand the cause of a problem.
The new version also includes monitoring of individual thread CPU activity and options for triggering diagnostic recordings in response to non-fatal errors.
This can make a significant difference, especially when dealing with intermittent problems.
Not every fault can be reproduced on demand. It is therefore particularly valuable when the system captures the relevant diagnostic information at the moment the problem actually occurs.
With Zephyr support, Continuous Observability becomes accessible to an even wider range of embedded development teams.
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Small Improvements - Big Impact
The developments presented in this newsletter cover very different areas of embedded development. Scalable fonts, flash file systems, microcontroller support, and runtime analysis tools may appear to have little in common at first glance.
Yet they share an important idea:
They help developers make better use of the capabilities already available to them.
Sometimes that means reducing memory requirements. Sometimes it means making a new hardware component easier to use. And sometimes, better insight into runtime behavior makes it possible to understand a problem more quickly - a problem that might otherwise have taken considerable time to investigate.
The value of professional development tools therefore lies not only in the number of features they offer.
What matters is how effectively they support developers in their actual work - and how much time and effort they can save.
This is also how we see our role at Carnica Technology.
We do not simply want to introduce you to new products. We want to help you find the technologies and tools that make sense for your requirements, both technically and economically.
If you have questions about any of the solutions presented here, or would like to discuss how they could be integrated into your existing development environment, I would be delighted to hear from you. | |
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Just a little over seven weeks until Christmas. I hope you are not shocked! Yes, time is flying by. But if we manage our time wisely, we can accomplish everything—including our goals for the year.
The best thing about the future is that only one day comes at a time.
Stay curious!
| | Kind Regards, Marian A. Wosnitza
„Winners never give up. Quitters never win." (Unknown)
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