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Case Studies
Development of WiMax Driver Software
The Customer :
A fabless semiconductor company involved in development of WiMax CPE.

The work involved :

  • Development of device drivers on various operating systems.
  • Development of relevant driver/host side protocol stack and related software.
The result :
  • The customer started with one driver. Since then we have been involved in drivers/protocol software on various OSs and on the device side.
  • Our people are involved in the critical path activities.
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Performance Improvement of a USB ethernet Device driver on Windows

The Customer :
A Fabless semiconductor company.

The work involved :
  • The customer wanted us to improve the performance of the USB ethernet chip/driver.
  • The driver from the customer was getting 35-50Mbps on Receive and 50-80 on transmit.
  • The customer needed above 70Mbps on both transmit and receive for a design win.
The result :
  • The driver was redesigned/enhanced to give more than 90 Mbps on both transmit and receive.
  • The customer came back with additional driver development requirements on WinCe and Apple Mac.
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Device Driver For a PCI Express Root Complex Device

The Customer :
A High Speed Interface Solutions Company.

The challenge :
  • The root complex device acts as a PCI endpoint for upstream and RC for down stream devices.
  • The target was to make it look like an independent bus and allocate the resources without changing BIOS etc.
  • The project was earlier awarded to another consulting company and they failed to deliver after taking about 10 months time and then the project was given to us.
The work involved :
  • Basic driver for the end point.
  • Bus driver that would enumerate and configure the devices down stream and allocate resources for them from the common pool.
  • The resources have to be allocated and devices have to be configured using a common pool as PCI original root is not aware of existence of the devices downstream.
The result :
  • The driver was completed in about 4-5 months time as the hardware/firmware also was getting tested first time and had bugs.
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Windows PPPoE IM Driver
The Customer :
Our customer is a technology company providing equipments for Wireless Local Loop.

The Challenge :
The customer wished to develop a dialer using Ethernet adapters by using the PPPoE technology on Windows 98. i.e. The driver software should be able to emulate PPP over the Ethernet connection. Also, it needed application and configuration software to create and configure the dialer.

The Solution :
The requirement needed the implementation of a Windows NDIS Intermediate driver to implement the PPPoE RFC. The intermediate driver would have a protocol interface at the lower edge for communicating with the NDIS miniport drivers. It would have a WAN Miniport interface at the upper edge to communicate with NDISWAN intermediate driver provided by Windows. In addition, it allows TCP MSS clamping and configuration of TCP MSS and MTU.
The software was developed in 3 months time.

The Technology :
The complexity of the project was in understanding the intricacies of Intermediate driver on Windows 98 as the documentation is not clear/non existent.

The Result :
The customer was very happy with the quality, fast delivery time and the low development cost. More so as their earlier effort in getting it done from some other company had failed. Also, This project enabled GRACELABS to build on its technical resources in the areas of Intermediate drivers on Windows and PPPoE.

Also, the customer entrusted GRACELABS with providing the same software on other Operating systems.

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Windows WDM 3G-PP TE-UE Multiplexer
The Customer :
Our customer is a fast-growing wireless technology company.

The Challenge :
The customer wished to port the 3GPP TE-UE multiplexer driver to Windows 2000.

The Solution :
The requirement needed the porting of a driver for 3GPP TE-UE multiplexer driver to Windows 2000. The functionality was to multiplex a serial line for use by multiple applications by providing virtual COM ports. The porting needed an understanding of the original driver, the protocol and WDM intermediate driver.
The porting work was done in a month’s time.

The Technology :
The complexity of the project was in understanding the protocol and the original driver implementation, as the porting had to be done in a very short span of time.

The Result :
The customer was very happy with the quality, fast delivery time and the low development cost and started entrusting GRACELABS with driver work in similar areas and later embedded work in integrating Wireless chipset related software to the Windows Mobile software for the embedded OS and Bluetooth stack related software.

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Apple MAC USB IrDA Driver
The Customer :
Our customer is an evolving Fabless semiconductor company focusing on data communication ICs.

The Challenge :
Our customer has a USB IrDA device supporting SIR, MIR, and FIR modes. The customer wanted the Apple MAC driver to be developed for the IrDA device.

The Solution :
GRACELABS team went through the IrDA architecture on Apple MAC 10.3. Apple supports IRComm, IRLAP and IrLMP in their protocol stack and developed the driver using IoKit Architecture. In addition to the IOkit/protocol stack specific functionality the driver implementation involved framing, CRC16/CRC32 calculation/verification etc. The driver along with the stack was tested using mobile phone utilities. Also, a driver with support for serial communication (Without protocol stack support) using the IrDA device was developed and utilities were written to transfer raw data between Windows and Apple using the serial connection. The driver was completed in about 3 months time.

The Technology :
The technologies involved were IrDA, Apple MAC IOKit driver architecture and USB.

The Result :
The device was supported on Apple MAC platform.

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Linux IrDa Driver

The Customer :
Our customer is a Technology Company.

The Challenge :
Our customer has a USB IrDA device which had a vendor specific interface.

The Solution :
On Linux IrDA could be supported as a network device. So, a network driver was developed to support the device. The driver had support for vendor specific commands, framing etc. The work was completed in about 2 months time.

The Technology :
Linux, IrDA, IrNet, Socket buffers.

The Result :
The device was supported on Linux platform.
With the kind of technical expertise we have, the first part i.e Boot loader, OAL , Serial driver, display driver and A/D converter driver/library were completed in a short time. Currently the second phase is in progress.

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Linux PCI WLAN Driver
The Customer :
Our customer is a fabless semiconductor company focused on WLAN ICs.

The Challenge :
Our customer has a PCI Wireless LAN device supporting 802.11 a/b/g. The customer had a Windows driver for the same. The customer wanted the driver to be ported to Linux.

The Solution :
GRACELABS team went through the existing driver code and ported the driver to Linux while keeping the original architecture. The team had regular communications and exchange of ideas with the customers' team and worked as an extended team of the customer. The team used its expertise in Linux Network device drivers/WLAN for porting the driver in a short time period. The driver had features like firmware download, support for both infrastructure and IBSS mode etc. Also, the application and IOCTLs for diagnosing and setting up the device was ported.

The Technology :
The complexity of the project was in understanding the original architecture and maintaining the abstract interface that was being used between the OS dependent module, protocol module, and OS independent module while making sure the changes made in the common module doesn't break the original Windows driver.

The regular communication and cooperation of the customer's protocol and software teams was very helpful in achieving the result.

The Result :
The project was completed in 21/2 months time. Seeing the progress of the project the customer came back to us for providing consultancy on enhancements/bug fixing of the Windows driver for WHQL certification.

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Windows USB Touch screen driver
The Customer :
Our end customer is a technology company providing Touch Screen Monitors/Panels.

The Challenge :
Our customer had a touch screen controller having USB interface. They needed us to develop the USB driver for the device on Windows 2000.

The Solution :
The device was a vendor specific device. The driver development involved :

  • Support for USB interface.
  • Exporting mouse functionality for a non HID device.
  • Getting the touch coordinates and creating the report descriptor for the HID class driver.
  • Support for functionality for double click, drag, right click, left click etc. for the non HID device.
Having experience in these areas the drivers were developed in a short period.

The Technology :
Touch screen, WDM, USB 1.1, HID

The Result :
The touch screen device was supported on Windows 2000.

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Windows Serial Touch screen driver
The Customer :
Our end customer is a technology company providing Touch Screen Monitors/Panels.

The Challenge :
Our customer had a touch screen controller having serial interface. They needed us to develop the serial driver for the device on Windows 2000.

The Solution :
The device was a vendor specific device. The driver development involved :
  • Support for Serial interface.
  • Exporting mouse functionality.
  • Getting the touch coordinates, scaling it, and reporting to the mouse class driver.
  • Support for functionality for double click, drag, right click, left click etc. for the device.
  • Providing interface to the user application for calibration, specifying type of click etc.
Having experience in these areas the drivers were developed in a short period.

The Technology :
Touch screen, WDM, USB 1.1, HID

The Result :
The touch screen device was supported on Windows 2000.

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Windows PCI WLAN Driver - WHQL certification
The Customer :
Our customer is a Technology Company.

The Challenge :
Our customer has a PCI Wireless LAN device supporting 802.11 a/b/g. The customer had a Windows driver for the same. The customer wanted the driver to be made WHQL compatible.

The Solution :
Earlier GRACELABS had done the porting of the driver from Windows to Linux. The customer was not able to execute the 2C tests as the connection establishment test was not passing due to lack of support for IPX packets. GRACELABS Engineer with the help of the customer team fixed it and went ahead with testing and bug fixing for WHQL. The driver was made WHQL compatible in a short period.

The Technology :
WLAN, NDIS and WHQL

The Result :
The project was completed in 7 weeks time. This was possible thanks to the help from the customer team and due to the fact that the driver was relatively stable and only the WHQL related bug fixes/enhancements had to be made. Seeing the value addition, the customer has come to us for enhancements/bug fixing for WHQL certification for another version.

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Porting µClinux and µClibc to support DAPDNA Processor based board

The Customer :
A Japanese Technology company involved in building solutions based on DAPDNA processors.

The challenge :
  • The target hardware was based on IPFLEX DAPDNA processor.
  • 64MB flash and 256MB of RAM.
  • Integrated UARTS , LCD panel, and PCI controller.
The Solution :
  • µClinux was selected since dapdna is an MMU-less processor.
  • Its native library µClibc was selected to support user space applications.
The work involved :
  • Adding new processor support to Linux kernel.
  • Developing a board support package for the platform.
  • Porting user space library for applications.
  • Making the busy box application and shell environment run on the platform.
The result :
  • With our technical expertise, the challenges were met within a short period of time.
  • µClinux was supported on the DAPDNA.
  • The processor manufacturer was able to successfully demonstrate µCLinux running on the platform in the major embedded exhibition(ESEC 2004) held in Japan.
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Development of WinCE BSP
The Customer :
A renowned OS Company.

The work involved :

  • Development of WinCe BSP for a PXA250/255 based board.
  • Development of device drivers for the peripherals on the board.
The result :
  • The customer started with the BSP.
  • The customer has come back with additional requirements and porting of the same BSP to newer versions of winCE.
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Windows CE 4.2 USB Ethernet Driver

The Customer :
Our customer is a leading fabless semiconductor company which focuses mainly on data communication ICs.

Our customer had developed a USB Ethernet chip. The customer had a Windows device driver for the device and wanted to develop a Windows CE driver for the same.

The Solution :
Earlier GRACELABS team was involved in the performance improvement of the Windows 2000 driver for the same device and was familiar with the device/driver. Windows CE also uses NDIS architecture for Network drivers. However, the USB interface and driver loading interface are different for Windows CE. Hence the work involved implementing the driver loading/dll interface, modification of the driver to use the Windows CE USB driver interface and setting up the registry entries for building/installing the driver as part of the platform and creating the inf ( for generating cab file) file for installing the driver separately. Also, the “wsttcp” tool was ported onto Windows CE for performance testing of the driver.

The Technology :
The technologies involved were USB, Ethernet, NDIS, and Windows CE.

The Result :
The driver was delivered in time and the customer started entrusting us with more drivers on Windows CE.

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XSCALE/ARM WinCE BSP
The Customer :
Our customer is a software service provider focusing on automotive sector.

The Challenge :
Our customer wants to port WinCE onto an XSCALE based board. The end customer is in the process of building a device that would be used in test and measurement equipments. The board supports Serial interface, LCD display, Flash and Ethernet.

The Solution :
The project involved :
Phase 1 :
  • Writing a boot loader for downloading and writing the image into the flash. It supports both Serial and thernet download.
  • Customizing the OAL to run on the target board.
  • Writing/Customizing the drivers for :
    - Serial interface
    - Display device
    - Flash
    - Ethernet
Phase 2 :
  • Providing support for KITL.
  • Power Management Support
With the kind of technical expertise we have, the Phase 1 has been done in a short time. Then the customer came back with Phase 2.

The Result :
WinCE was supported on the PXA250/255 processor based hardware platform . GRACELABS acquired technical expertise on one more SOC platform in areas like boot loader, OS porting, driver development and BSP development.

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Porting WinCE to support Hitachi SH7727 Processor based board
The Customer :
Our customer is an embedded solution provider.

The Challenge :
Our customer wants to port WinCE onto a Hitachi SH7727 based board. The end customer is in the process of building a device that would be used in a traffic controller equipment. The board supports Serial interface, LCD display, Flash, Ethernet and A/D converter.

The Solution :
The project involved :
Phase 1 :
  • Writing a boot loader for downloading and writing the image into the flash. It supports both Serial and ethernet download.
  • Customizing the OAL to run on the target board.
  • Providing support for KITL.
  • Writing/Customizing the drivers for :
    - Serial interface
    - Display device
    - Flash
    - Ethernet
    - A/D converter
Phase 2 :
  • Power management support.
The Result :
WinCE was supported on the Hitachi SH7727 processor based hardware platform and the Operating system vendor was able to successfully demonstrate WinCE running on the target platform. GRACELABS acquired technical expertise on one more SOC platform in areas like boot loader, OS porting, driver development and BSP development.
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GRACELABS participates in Embedded System Conference Silicon Valley
 
 
GRACELABS participates in Computex Taipei
 
 
GRACELABS adds Japanese world leader in Consumer Electronics as new client
 
 
GRACELABS adds US world leader in Wireless and Networking Technologies as new client
 
 
GRACELABS adds European Semiconductor giant a new client
 
 
GRACELABS adds US Automation & Test Instrumentation Company as new client
 
 
GRACELABS adds world leader in Test, measurement and monitoring technology as new client.
 
 
GRACELABS adds leading company in the semiconductor industry as new client.
 
 
 
 
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