How much time do three experts need to explain the ins and outs of the embedded Linux market? The answer is one hour and 15 minutes. That's how long Dr. Stephen Edwards of Columbia University, Ross Rubin of NPD Techworld and Oren Teich of MontaVista spent on the topic on June 30th during the Future of Embedded Linux panel session at the C3 Expo in New York City. Yours truly had the privilege of moderating this distinguished panel.

Dr. Edwards, who is an assistant professor of computer science, educated the audience on the challenges of designing and building embedded systems. He observed that the complexity of embedded systems is growing by over 40% per year as measured by the average number of lines of code in embedded systems. Mr. Teich, director of worldwide marketing for embedded Linux vendor MontaVista, supported Dr. Edwards' point by noting that MontaVista ships with more than 30,000 lines of code. Mr. Teich was quick to point out, however, that few customers actually use all 30,000 lines. Thank goodness Linux is customizable.

Still, with even 10,000 lines of code going into products as diverse in mission as cell phones, PDAs, and the newfangled Pepper Pad (www.pepper.com ), Dr. Edwards said that the only way to get it right is to take code from elsewhere and modify it to fit the purpose at hand. The analogy he used was to auto making. As with builders of embedded systems, carmakers don't actually make anything - rather they design cars to meet consumer demands and assemble the prefabricated piece parts. So, too, with embedded systems. Linux, which is inherently modular, lends itself exceedingly well to this approach, since it can be sculpted six ways from Sunday to meet a particular need.

Where Linux falls short of some embedded system requirements, Dr. Edwards said, was in real-time computing. As he put it, this is where the timing of the computation is just as important as the result. Driving home the point, he observed, "A computational hiccup on your home computer is annoying. A computational hiccup on your ABS braking system can be fatal." While still requiring some work, Dr. Edwards assured the audience that he and his students at Columbia are hard at work on this problem and that several promising solutions should be available soon.

Preceding Dr. Edwards was Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD Techworld, where he tracks trends in the consumer electronics (CE) and wireless markets. NPD uses a combination of point-of-sale and survey data to offer its clients near-real-time insight into top-line performance. Mr. Rubin offered his perspective on the demand side of the equation - namely, what on earth are consumers asking their electronic devices to do that requires the dramatic growth in lines of code that Dr. Edwards observed? As it turns out, the ability to infuse greater intelligence into CE devices with flattening or declining sales curves is a key strategy for many manufacturers to reinvigorate their revenue. The example Mr. Rubin offered was digital cameras. That's right, cameras. While no manufacturer Mr. Rubin has spoken with claims to offer in-camera teeth whitening yet, they're building smart cameras that have embedded OSes that do things like in-camera redeye reduction. Cell phone maven Motorola and PDA innovator Palm are gravitating to Linux to increase the usefulness of their respective devices to consumers. Mr. Rubin noted that the vast technical resources being trained on Linux in places like India and China make the platform a sound strategic bet, since the availability of rich application support is all but guaranteed for the forseeable future.

Mr. Teich offered specific examples of how leading companies like Motorola and unnamed consumer electronic and network equipment makers have decreased product development lifecycles and costs and improved responsiveness by leveraging embedded Linux. He explained that embedded Linux offers the best compromise available between development control and functionality. On the control side of the ledger, Linux offers a modular flexible platform and a large off-the-shelf ecosystem of hardware and middleware; it's fully customizable - vendors can add their own application look-and-feel - and there's no proprietary lock-in. Linux's well-known functionality is derived through the platform's maturity, scalability, and the cross-platform standardization it delivers.

In response to an audience question regarding the security of embedded Linux systems, Dr. Edwards observed that while the challenge of providing secure code is a mighty one that will probably never be solved entirely, the Open Source development model seems to result in code that's less susceptible to attack.

For a copy of the presenters' slides, e-mail gwallace@linuxworld.com with the subject line C3 embedded slides.