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 AVIX-RT embedded solutions is founded and owned by Leon van Snippenberg. Leon has been working in the field of real time embedded system development for over 25 years, his main focus being on software development. This whole period he worked for consultancy companies on a large number of projects in very diverse environments both from a technical and a project organization perspective.
Leon has mainly worked on quite large scale projects. Examples of those are a control system for the light systems on a large international airport, a pick and place machine used to place electronic components on printed circuit boards and a new generation of X-ray diagnostic systems used in hospitals. One of the most important aspects in all these projects is they all have to deal with massive concurrency, which is reflected in their architecture. Leon found the theoretical background of most developers regarding this aspect to be insufficient. The design principle of ‘trial and error’ proves to be used quite often, this not really providing a solid background for systems development.
Furthermore he found there is quite a large gap in the approach used with large scale system development and the type of development used for small scale systems like single chip or single board systems the latter being more resource constraint. Observing these two ‘worlds’ led him to believe they can learn from one another.
Finally he believes the level of education in the field of concurrent system development is not up to par with the requirements from the companies needing this expertise. One of the reasons for this is that in order to understand concurrent system development, one must be able to think at a very abstract level where not only functional behavior of the system must be understood but also the relation between the different parts of the system over time (temporal behavior). The latter is very difficult to grasp and building a mental model of the timing behavior of a system is one of the most daunting tasks a software developer can be faced with.
With founding AVIX-RT embedded solutions Leon is using his professional expertise in this domain to help other people broaden their knowledge and obtain a better understanding of the matter. Two approaches are followed to reach this goal:
First, AVIX-RT has developed a real time kernel which, besides being a professional product usable for serious system development, is developed with educational and training purposes in mind. The name of this product is AVIX, which is an acronym for Advanced Virtual Integrated eXecutive.
Second, AVIX-RT will develop and teach courses in the field of concurrent system design. These courses will address the day to day needs of engineers working in this discipline both from a theoretical and a practical viewpoint.
All this is supported by this web site which will serve, amongst other, as a placeholder for theoretical knowledge in the field of concurrent system engineering. This knowledge will be based on the practical approach needed for day to day work but without neglecting the required theoretical background.
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