Day 1 Theme at ESC Silicon Valley: Embedded Solutions That Reduce Complexity for Customers' Applications

Day 1 of this year’s Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) Silicon Valley showed strong signs of an improving embedded systems market, coming off of an 18-month downturn.

Foot traffic at the show seemed to us to be up considerably from the past two years and the exhibiting vendors that we met agreed.  Many exhibitors even cited that the overall “quality” of their meetings was better than the previous 2 years.  They defined quality as the level of interest and qualification of their prospect meetings. 

Most of the vendors with whom we met also cited that calendar Q1 2010 results were quite strong.  Many cited activity up 20-30% from this time last year.  A few firms even had record-breaking Q1 results. 
Perhaps oddly, perhaps not, several vendors indicated a global shortage of some components is hampering 1H 2010 embedded systems production.  Odd in that with demand so soft for so long, one might expect some overcapacity condition to persist.  Not odd in that virtually every layer of the global communications commercial value chain has hustled to reduce inventory for the vast majority of prior fiscal quarters leading up to the ESC event. 

As always, there was a lot of innovation on display at the show and it was evident that most vendors in the embedded systems market continued to make technology development investments through the downturn. The overriding theme that VDC observed throughout the show was “reduce complexity for the customer”.  This was extant in some form in most of the announcements made by vendors at the event. And where it was not explicit, attacking complexity was clearly a theme in our anecdotal conversations. 

Below are a few of the highlights from VDC’s Day 1 meetings at the event.  Most, not all, share this theme.

Actel was displaying its recently announced SmartFusion FPGA processing platform, which combines a MCU core (a 32-bit ARM Cortex M3) inside of a low power FPGA.

This creates a solution ideal for highly complex motor and motion control applications through a processing platform that is low power, programmable, and versatile. The versatility provided by the combination of a FPGA and 32-bit MCU core operating together on the same chip, reduces the power required for such functionality.  Most importantly, the solution is programmable and therefore helps to reduce complexity for high-end motor control applications.

AMD launched a pair of complete CPU-based processing platforms for the embedded systems market.
These platforms – the compact ASB2 and the high performance AM3 platform – reduce complexity for users by combining x86 CPUs, chipsets, and graphics processors all into one predefined package that is both high in performance and low in power.  The lowest low power package comes in at 8W TDP. Of course, these solutions also come with backing of the vast x86 development ecosystem.

A vendor new to ESC events that focused on the message of reducing complexity was Dell’s OEM Solutions Group.

While many attendees were asking why Dell was at this show, the reality is that Dell has long been engaged in the embedded market, selling and even customizing server products for OEM customers in a number of embedded market segments. This billion-dollar-plus division has been active for over 12 years.
Dell’s strategy in this market is to help OEM customers simplify their compute platforms.

One example that Dell shared with VDC analysts was how it replaced a legacy medical platform that consisted of two white box servers, a high performance workstation, and an edge server with a single Dell-centric platform consisting of two identical customized workstations that provided better performance at a lower investment.

This type of implementation can reduce not only cost for the customer, but also simplify its supply chain management and technical support because it creates a unified platform. The firm also talked about how it can outsource development and manufacturing of the computer platform for the customer, as well as take on the supply chain management, testing, and even in-field service/support for the very same platforms.

We liked what we saw on Day 1 – a decidedly upbeat tone across the entire event as well as examples of sound innovation from just about every level of the embedded technical value chain, being driven from, and rewarded by, customers.