VDC Research: Embedded Microprocessor, Board & Systems Market Blog

At the Design West – Embedded Systems Conference 2013 – Part 2

In this blog we will continue to provide a few more highlights from the suppliers we spoke to at the 2013 DESIGN WEST / Embedded Systems Conference that was held last week in San Jose.

Small Form Factor Motherboards: At the VersaLogic booth we were shown several of their new small form factor motherboards, including the EBX format Copperhead that is powered by an Intel i7 processor and can support up to 3 independent displays. We also saw their COM Express Mini format Falcon and EPIC format Iguana that are powered by Intel Atom processors. The Iguana boards have a Mini PCIe card socket that allows an OEM to round out its configuration with a wide array of connectivity, storage, and other options. All of the Versalogic products we saw at the show were designed for extremely high reliability in operating temperatures that extend from -40C to +85C, and many of them can be ordered in Class 3 assembly versions for mission critical applications.

Computers-on-Modules (COMs): At the congatec booth we saw the variety of COM product lines they offer including Qseven, COM Express, ETX, and XTX. If customers require high power COMs in passive cooling configurations, congatec has patented spring loaded heatspreader thermal interfaces that pull heat away from chipset components and transfer it to the edge of the module. Depending on the OEM application, many of the congatec Qseven products can be ordered with x86 processors from AMD and Intel or ARM processors from Freescale.

Development Platforms: At the ST Micro booth we visited with Ayla Networks who were demonstrating their proof-of-concept secure M2M cloud connectivity solutions with the STM32 F3 evaluation platforms representing connectivity targets. We expect to hear more from Ayla in the future, and you will likely be reading about them in our blog. At the Texas Instruments booth we were shown the new BeagleBoard Black open-source development platform. This impressive unit sells for only $45, and has a 1 GHz ARM A8 processor, 512MB of DDR3 RAM memory, and an on-board HDMI. The BeagleBoard can be expanded for multiple applications by using BeagleBone “capes”. There were multiple applications highlighted, including a remotely controlled electro-mechanical spider that had been fabricated using 3D printed parts.

Ultra Low Power MCUs: We noted that ST Micro had won an EE Times / EDN ACE Award for its Fully-Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FD-SOI) technology that allows devices to run using 20 – 50% less power. On a similar note, Renesas was demonstrating the power sipping ability of its RX111 group of MCUs that can wake up in 4.8us from a sleep mode, where it only consumes 350nA. In addition, the RX111 has 6 safety functions to verify/ensure that the device and supporting circuitry are working properly.

Industrial SATA III SSD: The VDC team met with Innodisc and learned about their new SATA III line of Flash Storage Products targeted at embedded applications in the industrial market.  These Innodisc products use arrays of lower-cost Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) memory chips to duplicate Single-Layer Cell performance and reliability at a significantly lower price point.

Embedded Certainty: At the XMOS booth we learned about their series of MCUs that were designed to remove uncertainty from critical applications. This means that programs can be developed where the signal timing is completely predictable. Roughly stated, the XMOS MCU have removed I/O layers and other elements that create signal latency or processing variables that can affect timing. There are many applications such as digital audio and collision avoidance that can benefit from MCUs with predictable timing.

Embedded Motherboards: As the VDC EHW team is currently in the midst of our supply-side coverage of the embedded motherboard market, we were particularly interested in seeing the two new SuperMicro X9DR products. Both of these units were extremely powerful and can be used in applications that require power-efficient processing of high volumes of data. SuperMicro also sells its products into the traditional IT space and, as such, has some system options that can be attractive to OEMs supporting mission critical applications. These include built in Uninterruptible Power Supply and automatic flash memory backup of system RAM and CPU processes in the event of a power outage.

Stay tuned for part 3 where we will wrap up our observations from the 2013 Design West show. 

At the Design West – Embedded Systems Conference 2013 – Part 1 the Embeddy

Last week, while attending the 2013 DESIGN West/Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose we presented the VDC Research Embeddy Award for the best new embedded hardware product. As part of the selection process the VDC Embedded Hardware team met with more than 30 companies to discuss product announcements and a variety of industry trends impacting the embedded hardware market today. Before we get to the award winner, we will start with a few highlights from some of the suppliers we spoke to at the show.

Connectivity enhanced Microcontrollers: Microchip usually makes several significant embedded hardware announcements at DW/ESC shows and this year was no exception.  VDC was given a detailed briefing on several new connectivity modules that OEMs can use for many applications. If the OEM's product already has a computing element, the new microchip modules are designed to easily integrate the needed Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, MiWi, and/or proprietary network types. If the OEM’s engineers have not settled on a processing element to interface with sensors or product components they might consider the modules that include integrated MCUs. The good news for OEMs is that the selection of any of these Microchip modules will likely eliminate product testing for overall FCC compliance and production test and calibration. Microchip demonstrated how a lighting OEM might integrate these new products in a way that would enable lighting products to be controlled in M2M applications including network based portals and authenticated mobile devices.

Secure M2M: Our next stop at the show was with Icon Labs and they were highlighting a new barrier/firewall device that was well suited for supporting M2M on legacy equipment in industrial applications. The unit we saw was targeted for a market price of ~$1K but included many security elements using Intel Atom processing and embedded software from Icon Labs’ partners including Wind River, ZiLog, McAfee, and Green Hills.

New Rugged Handheld Devices: At our next stop, the VDC EHW team was greeted by the enthusiastic ADLINK team and they had every right to be that way. There were a number of interesting products in many categories.  We were particularly interested in ADLINK’s foray into the enterprise handheld device market with the IMX-9000 which includes barcode reading capability, multiple connectivity protocols all contained in a stylish but rugged enclosure that is said to withstand IP67 and 1.5M drop tests. While at the ADLINK booth, we saw the new Advanced TCA processor blade. The new aTCA-9300 is well suited for media delivery platforms because of the need for scalable processing to deliver content in the needed forms and formats for the transmission and end use by the target device.

Media Processing: As a bit of background, it is not feasible to store content in all forms and formats suitable for delivery to, and use by, the huge numbers of things used to view them. This means that content has to be converted on the fly and that means there is a huge need for embedded processing products to perform these tasks.

ASICs and FPGAs: We received updates on the latest developments in the world of ASICs and FPGAs. We spoke with Altera who divides the majority of the FPGA market with Xilinx.  Altera  provided an update on the SoC FPGA line that was introduced in late 2011. The Cyclone V and Arria V FPGAs incorporate ARM CPU cores with FPGAs to allow OEMs to develop more powerful and flexible product designs while economizing on needed circuit board space.  One advantage that FPGAs normally have over ASICS is that they take less time to design and can be brought into production faster. If design issues are discovered at later stages, they can be corrected faster and at lower cost. The Altera inclusion of ARM cores allows OEM engineers to leverage many development tools that are available for ARM and that theoretically increases the advantages over traditional ASIC processes.

On the ASIC side, we received a briefing by Triad Semiconductor on their ViaASICs  and the associated development toolset ViaDesigner. The goals of these two products is to eliminate the time-to-market and development cost advantages of FPGA products over ASICs. The process works like this. In the semiconductor fab, the wafers are started and arrays of circuits and functional blocks are laid down but not configured and interconnected. These are then stocked until needed. An OEM engineer then uses the development tool that determines how the Triad chip will be configured. The data from that tool is sent to the fab and they create the mask(s) needed to for the next steps in the wafer creation process. The next steps lay down the layers needed for connecting the functional blocks creating a finished product.

New SBCs: Advantech highlighted a new compact design Single Board Computer (SBC) called the MIO-5290 that can be ordered with 3^rd Gen Intel i3 or i7 processors. With its ability to drive 3 independent displays with intense graphics, and the availability to add various I/O modules to customize the product, the MIO-5290 is well suited for many applications such as intelligent signage. The VDC team identified the MIO as one of the finalists in the Embeddy Award selection process.

Another finalist in the Embeddy Award selection process was WinSystems SBC35C series of products that utilize the 800 Mhz Freescale  i.MX 6Q Industrial Processor. There were several things that impressed us. The SBC35C board layout was very well thought out with industrial bus connections all on one side and the other needed connections on the other. The SBC35C can be run with Power over Ethernet (PoE) or a single DC source. The last thing that impressed us was the fact that the WinSystems team was showing their product the proper respect by handling the demo SBC with an anti-static bag. If they do that on the show floor, you can expect that their production and test process is also using similar precautions.

2013 Hardware Embeddy Winner: And now, without further ado, the winner of the VDC Hardware Embeddy award for the 2013 Design West / ESC show was AMD for their new G-Series family of SoC processors that we believe will make a big impact in the embedded hardware market.

ALPR = Big $$ for Embedded Hardware Suppliers

An interesting opportunity for embedded hardware suppliers caught the attention of the VDC M2M Embedded Platform team. The opportunity was highlighted in a Boston Globe article this week about a local police department that equipped a cruiser with a $28K Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) unit. There were a number of eye-popping statistics starting with the fact that the unit apparently paid for itself in the first 11 days it was deployed. The ROI was accomplished from revenues generated by identifying vehicles and drivers with expired licenses, registrations, inspections, or other unpaid fines and fees. ALPRs can also be used for parking enforcement particularly in areas where civilian officials want to encourage shoppers with low cost short interval parking spaces. In this parking application, an official uses an ALPR to detect commuters and/or store workers that try to take advantage of the potential arbitrage and fine them.

Now let’s look at the $28K bundle of embedded hardware and software and speculate a bit on what is likely to be involved. The ALPR cited by the Boston Globe had the capability to read 1,800 license plates per minute and cover 4 lanes of traffic simultaneously. It can make those readings at differential speeds of up to 150 mph. This is a key factor because the unit is mounted on a cruiser as opposed to a parking or toll-taking lane where only the vehicle would be moving and the zone where the license plate would be is more predictable. Therefore there has to be a camera system capable of capturing a wide field at varying focal lengths and light conditions. The torrent of data from the camera system has to be rapidly processed to identify license plates and simultaneously perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on 4 or more plates in the field of view. Additionally, the system has to identify the state that issued the plate. This is challenging because many states like Massachusetts issue multiple types of specialty plates for sports teams and other organizations or causes. States also control costs by not replacing license plates until they practically fall apart. Therefore, it is fairly safe to say that there would be approximately $10K in optics and high performance processing inside the ALPR to accomplish the OCR function.

What happens next is important. We are going to make an assumption and it is a big one. We will assume that the ALPR generates data that supports law enforcement but this data will not be a cornerstone for court cases. This means that the raw video would not need to be compressed and stored for future reference while preserving chain of custody. For example, if the ALPR were going to be used for moving traffic or criminal violations it would need to have irrefutable video evidence that identified the driver as well as speed measurement data. Because of our limited OCR assumption, the captured data only needs to be combined with time stamps, GPS coordinates and, perhaps a few operational parameters. As a result, this limited data set would be in the order of kbytes per record as opposed to Mbytes per second for full video archiving. Even so, this still represents several thousands of dollars per ALPR unit for the additional embedded sensing, processing, storage, HMI and communication hardware.

In our estimate, the next part of the ALPR application would optimally involve cloud-based Big Data resources. The ALPR would transmit captured data in real time and processed for matches in multiple databases. The response back to the police cruiser would have to be rapid to be effective. The most effective ALPR supporting infrastructure would have to combine data from all municipalities, states, and federal agencies relevant to a particular region. Suffice it to say, the cloud-based and communication services could easily amount to several hundred dollars per month for each ALPR deployed.

The Boston Globe article stated that there were already 87 ALPRs deployed in the state with another 7 Boston area police departments adding 21 additional in the next month. Considering that Massachusetts alone has over 350 cities and towns but the entire US represents over 36,000 municipalities, the potential market for ALPRs and the embedded hardware inside them would appear to be a huge and rapidly growing opportunity.

Situational Awareness – New Year’s Edition

In the last two days, I have written about two situational awareness applications for embedded hardware products. The first was toward the creepy side and the second much more acceptable on multiple fronts. I think you will find this somewhat in the middle.  As the New Year’s Eve approaches, you might find this application provides you with actionable intelligence that you can really use.

In Wednesday’s Boston Globe I read a story about a company called SceneTap and they provide a downloadable application that can give you current population and demographic information from local bars or hangouts that you might be interested in. How does SceneTap provide this product? The answer is quite interesting from both a technical and business perspective. Let’s look at both sides:

Business Perspective: SceneTap provides the downloadable application to users for free and it is activated when users open an account using a valid e-mail address. To the potential patrons, they can use the application to see if a place is “hopping” or not. SceneTap earns revenues by selling the hardware and/or service to establishments in a covered urban area. The value proposition to one of these establishments is multi-faceted. First of all, if you have a place that is relatively popular at least some of the time, it should increase business because more people will know that it is a good place to go. If they have a good time, they are likely to come back. The application can also provide management with actionable intelligence about the exact demographics of patrons during all hours, days, and/or events. Previously, this would have been done with less accurate and manpower-intensive qualitative data. SceneTap could also provide information on the application use either inside the establishment or, at a minimum how many times users looked up the establishment. This data could be used to send e-mail offers to targeted users and also be a source of advertising revenue for SceneTap.

Hardware Perspective: The SceneTap embedded hardware consists of people counters at the entry/exit doors and cameras that provide facial images that are analyzed by local and/or cloud-based computers. We believe that SceneTap can use something like Intel’s AIM Suite as part of the solution stack. SceneTap stresses that their application only performs facial analysis as opposed to facial recognition which is a very important distinction for placement of this product on the creepiness scale. So, if you are using the SceneTap application to determine if a specific person is at a particular place, you will have to use Twitter, Facebook or something else like a phone call for that actionable intelligence.

Other embedded hardware that could potentially deployed as part of the solution stack would be microphones and DSP components to detect sound levels and Wi-Fi equipment that could detect the number (but hopefully not identity) of SceneTap users inside the particular establishment.   

Final Thoughts: So, as you look for a place to go on New Year’s Eve, you might think of using SceneTap if they are covering your area. I am lucky because they do have coverage in Boston, but I would probably use it in a way that SceneTap founders probably did not originally envision.  Since I am no longer young, hip, or single, I would tend to use SceneTap to find a quite place that is NOT hopping. Then, I won’t have to stand in a line to get in, wait very long to get served, and most importantly, be able to hear the conversation of my wife.

Have a great New Year’s everyone and best wishes for a prosperous and fiscal cliff-less 2013.

That TV You are Viewing Might be Looking at You

This blog related to a Verizon patent application is a follow-up to a previous VDC embedded hardware blog talked about the embedded computing capability being added to signage. The Verizon patent application is for similar applications/technology related to set-top boxes.

If the Verizon technology described in the patent is deployed, that same type of technology mentioned in the previous blog on signage might one day apply in your living room.  The Verizon technology would monitor the TV viewing area using microphones, cameras and or sensors. These sensors could be located in the set-top box, TV, and/or mobile device. Verizon’s overall goal would be to gain situational awareness of the TV viewers to allow targeted advertising.  

Deploying this type of situational awareness technology will have to be done very carefully to avoid offending customers. The deployment will also need to be extremely securely to avoid any risk that the system would be hacked and expose customers to remote eavesdroppers/peepers. The risk that law enforcement would want to leverage such as system for court approved wiretaps can also not be discounted. To be clear, Verizon has only applied for the patent, there is no indication that this is close to an actual product at this point.

Verizon certainly would not be the first company with home intrusive-technology. If you have ever played Xbox360 Kinnect, you have seen that it snaps pictures of game participants. In addition to showing them on-screen after the game action finishes as entertainment, the Xbox 360 transmits some of these back to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform where the data is stripped of identifying elements but is often used by game developers as a part of a feedback process.

Embedded processors and situational intelligence will have an increasing presence in our home lives and certainly some of this is likely to be a bit creepy. In tomorrow’s blog, we will examine how this technology can be deployed for excellent non controversial causes such reducing the number and severity of tragedies like Sandy Hook and the Aurora Theatre.

That Sign You are Viewing Might Be Looking at You

While doing some research on small form factor embedded computers for our M2M reports, I ran across something I thought was very interesting, and I think you will find it interesting as well. I saw that a recently released Kontron embedded computer targeted at the digital signage market was pre-validated for use with Intel’s AIM Suite software. I thought that it couldn’t be AOL’s Instant Messenger so I wondered what it was. As it turns out, AIM stands for Audience Impression Metric and it uses video from outward facing cameras in the digital signage. By using the AIM software, the material being presented can be changed to improve response.

The keynote speech given by MIT’s Rosalind Picard at this year’s Design East/Embedded System Conference underscored the incredible amount of information that can be automatically generated from a video feed. As part of experiments refining the technology and testing reactions, the MIT media lab installed several of these systems to measure ‘happiness levels’ in several MIT public areas. One of Ms. Picard’s presentation slides showed that facial analysis software can even measure the pulse rate of the people based on minute changes in facial coloration.

How can M2M empowered signage work in practice? First of all, one fear of any company purchasing public advertising is that not enough people will see it to justify the expense. Now, assurances can be made and contracts written based on the number of people that truly look at the signage. Which graphics and message will have the best impact? Now multiple versions can be deployed and based on real time information, all of the signage can be changed to the best versions and possibly changed again when people show they are tired of them. It is even theoretically possible to change the advertisements dynamically in response to the demographics of the people in the vicinity. It could be a simple as adults versus children or more complicated analysis based on personal characteristics and what people are wearing or carrying. Pretty interesting isn’t it and perhaps a little scary?

If this topic is of interest, this previous VDC blog also covered M2M in digital signage.

Design East / ESC Show 2012 Highlights - Part 2

On Monday through Wednesday of this week, VDC attended the Design East ESC show at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.  In yesterday's blog we talked about the embeddy. In today's blog we will look at some of our experiences at the show. At this year’s show, we noted several themes: safety & regulation, security, connectivity as well as the usual performance, power, and price trends.

Connectivity Trends: A few years ago, the VDC perception while attending ESC Boston and Freescale’s Technology Forum, was that many members of the embedded community had significant uncertainty around what communications standards would become prominent. In mid-2012, this has not changed entirely because suppliers still tend to support as many standards as reasonably possible. But, presently, we believe there is more traction for Bluetooth and WiFi, and less emphasis on Zigbee.  It was clear from multiple conversations we had with component and system suppliers that both Bluetooth and WiFi have made huge in-roads into the embedded markets. This makes tremendous sense with the proliferation of smart portable devices in the market offering a natural HMI interface and Bluetooth and WiFi are on virtually every one of them.

A few highlights from the VDC Embedded Hardware Team at the show:

Keynotes: There were two great keynote speeches by Futuretainment author Mike Walsh and MIT’s Rosalind W. Picard, Sc.D., FIEEE. VDC’s quick takeaway from these keynotes is that embedded system designers need to increasingly take into account the social and emotional aspects of the market and end users instead of focusing on the technical and financial components. That’s why companies like Intel are hiring Anthropologists and MIT’s media lab projects are so compelling. (If you missed them, hopefully UBM will post these keynotes or at least some highlights from them)

Aci  Technology: We visited the Aci Technology (aka Arise Computer) booth and saw several of their fanless and industrial computer solutions that were targeted at markets including kiosks and gaming as well as retail automation.

Connect Tech: We had a great briefing from Connect Tech and we noted their growing line of embedded integrated computer systems based on their IP and overall experience designing embedded solutions for OEMs. We had previously seen an interesting case where Bluefin Robotics engaged Connect Tech to develop a single PC/104 board solution that contained the functionality that formerly required 3 times the space. It is this type of design expertise that has led to recent wearable computing solutions for military applications. 

Freescale: With more and more connected devices, and increasingly private data (medical records for example) being transferred through networks, the need for security around medical systems is increasingly relevant. Freescale had its Home Health Hub (HHH) reference platform on display. The hub serves as a central connection point for multiple wireless health devices such as pulse oximeters, blood glucose monitors, weight scales, etc. The hub can also share information gathered from these devices with a display device such as a tablet. Freescale’s wireless partner on this project was Digi International, who provides their iDigi Telehealth Application Kit which includes the Freescale HHH reference board.

Microchip: During the show, Microchip announced a new series of 8-bit MCUs across three lines of its PIC family microcontrollers (PIC16F145X, PIC18F2X/4XK50, and PIC18F97J94) that are within its USB 2.0 family. Featuring an internal crystal that saves $0.15 on the microcontroller’s cost, a wide range of pin counts, and low power consumption, these PIC microcontrollers are helping to round out Microchip’s USB enabled MCUs. Microchip will begin ramping up production on these chips in November, with sampling on some of the product family already available.

NXP: NXP announced two new microcontrollers, the LPC408x and the LPC407x, that include ARM Cortex-M4 processors. Intended applications include displays, scanners, medical diagnostics, and motor-control applications among others. These MCUs also have pin capability and innovative peripherals, and provide for ease of qualification. They also provide migration capabilities between NXP’s Cortex-M3 families towards the high performance LPC4300.

Sierra Wireless: We heard about their new AirPrime device that will allow OEMs to produce embedded systems that more easily allow their customers to switch cellular carriers. This can be an important cost saving feature as the OEMs customers can aggressively seek out the best deals between the cellular companies and can easily reconfigure as needed.

ST Microelectronics: At the ST Microelectronics booth the VDC team heard about their latest 32 bit microcontrollers that are part of the substantial and still growing ST product array of MCUs. The STM32 F3 series had many impressive capabilities including floating point and options that included 16-bit A/D converters. The F3 product line already has many different members with more on the roadmap so, in most all cases, an engineer can select the exact ST MCU product that meets their needs without paying for functionality that they don’t require. The F3 series was also pin compatible with the F1 series and that allows an engineer to upscale a previously designed product with minimal development costs. The VDC team was also impressed with the ST dual interface M2LR series of EEPROM products that can be accessed via I²C wireline bus or using passive RFID technology.

Texas Instruments:  In addition to the RM46x that won the VDC Embeddy award, the VDC team also saw several other TI products including the Stellaris Launch Pad that is currently priced at $4.99. This product empowers embedded system engineers to develop new products using TI’s Stellaris M4 ARM based microcontroller. This development kit is augmented by a myriad number of “BoosterPack” boards made by TI and a number of their partners that can be stacked together to do proof of concept on a complete product solution.

L-R Chris Rommel (VDC), Dev Pradhan (TI), David Laing (VDC)

Qualcomm: Perhaps one of the most interesting attendees at the show was Qualcomm. Better known as a provider of mobile phone applications processors, Qualcomm is beginning to explore the embedded market with its Snapdragon S4 processor. Qualcomm co-presented its Snapdragon processor line alongside its embedded partner, Intrinsyc Software International, which bases its Open-Q System-On-Module around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. 

A Focus on Storage: With a VDC EHW project focused on storage trends within embedded integrated computer systems (EICS) kicking off in 2013, the VDC team made it a point to visit the booths of the memory/SSD companies that were at the show. We saw the latest product offerings from Kingston Digital, Swissbit, and Transcend Information. The EICS suppliers that we have spoken with about storage have indicated that memory/storage products can vary greatly with respect to speed, capacity, cost, and overall longevity. Depending on the application, a particular memory/SSD product would be suitable while another similar unit may not be. Why is that? Stay tuned in early 2013 and we will likely blog on that very subject. If you want more information, we would be thrilled to have your company as a founding sponsor for the report.

Next week we will be providing some detail on an Intel presentation that was given during the ESC show to highlight their Intelligent Systems Framework.

Reminder - ESC Design East Show is Next Week - Last Chance to Qualify for Embeddy

There's still time to connect with the VDC Research Embedded Hardware & Software team at the ESC show next week but the coveted time-slots on Tuesday are rapidly being taken. If you believe you have a new product that qualifies for one of the VDC embeddy awards contact us as soon as possible as at least one member of the VDC team needs to see the product demo/briefing during or before the show. The winners will be notified on Tuesday evening and announced just before Wednesday's keynote speech.

The VDC team will be at the show site starting on Monday and, of course we can also schedule meetings on Wednesday as well.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Hardware, please contact:

David Laing, Senior Analyst, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: dlaing@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x146.

Or

Chris Rommel, Vice President, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: crommel@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x123.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Software and Tools, please contact:

Jared Weiner, Analyst, Embedded Software & Tools Practice, VDC Research Group at: jweiner@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x143.

Connect with VDC Research Group at the Design East/Embedded Systems Conference 2012!

VDC Research Group will be joining the Design East/Embedded Systems Conference 2012 exhibition and conference.  During the conference, we will be presenting the coveted VDC Embeddy awards to a deserving product in the software and hardware categories. To make sure your product is considered, please make sure that:

• The product is formally announced at the show or, has been announced as of August, 2012
• That the VDC Research team will be briefed on the details of the product by your show staff.

Note: The Embeddys will be presented before Wednesday's keynote address. Therefore the briefings need to be completed by the evening of Tuesday September 18th.

VDC’s Embedded Hardware Team will be available at the show starting Monday September 17th and will be at the conference through the 19th.  During that time, we welcome the opportunity to connect with attending vendors.  We look forward to explaining VDC’s research methodology, learning about your latest product releases, and discussing your market research and strategic needs.

If you would like to learn more about the show, please click here.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Hardware, please contact:

David Laing, Senior Analyst, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: dlaing@vdcresearch.com or 508.653.9000 x146.

Or

Chris Rommel, Vice President, Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice, VDC Research Group at: crommel@vdcresearch.com  or 508.653.9000 x123.

If you would like to schedule a meeting around Embedded Software, please contact:

Jared Weiner, Analyst, Embedded Software & Tools Practice, VDC Research Group at: jweiner@vdcresearch.com  or 508.653.9000 x143.

Might Air Flow through Northrop Grumman’s Air-Flow-Through Technology Patent?

A couple of weeks ago, an interesting press release appeared in my Inbox, announcing that Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions (CWCDS) was introducing a new version of their VPX6-490 DSP board, which utilizes dual NVIDIA GPGPU MXM modules and NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture. Besides the fact that this board appears to have extraordinary capabilities, this new version also utilizes Northrop Grumman’s air-flow-through (AFT) cooling technology, which CWCDS was the first to license. This is also, in my opinion, a valid and exciting technological development, providing superior cooling while protecting sensitive components from potentially damaging contaminants in the ambient air. The board release announcement was dated June 28, 2012; the press release announcing the license arrangement was dated April 19, 2012.

Being curious, I decided to poke around a bit and learn more about this AFT technology. I downloaded Northrop Grumman’s patent no. 7,995,436 (click on “Images” to see the drawings), and stumbled on something that gave me pause.

Bear in mind that I am not a patent professional. However, in my career I have been sole or co-inventor on 17 US patents, and thus have been involved in the process and have seen some of its pitfalls.

A Hole in the Patent?

In the Disclosure of the Invention section of the patent, which appears in Column 2 of page 15, the patent reads “…at least one removable module…” (for example, board) “…electrically or electro-optically coupled with the base unit…” (for example, backplane). No problem here. However, in the Abstract, which appears on page 1, and in the claims which appear on pages 18 and 19, the “electrically coupled” option has been omitted. All of the independent claims (Claims 1, 8 and 16) stipulate that the boards (I’m using my own “layman’s” terms here to avoid getting bogged down in the legalese) are “electro-optically coupled” to the backplane. To my knowledge (and I checked into this to be sure) electro-optical coupling is accomplished through the use of light sources (today, LEDs) and photoreceptors or photocells of some sort. Fiber optics, as in VITA 66, could also provide the proper coupling. Any of these would necessitate use of a special backplane rather than the “conventional” VPX types.

Further perusal of the Disclosure of the Invention failed to find any additional mention of the coupling means, be they electrical or electro-optical. I can’t see any reason why AFT would not work with electrically coupled boards and backplanes as well as with those that are electro-optically coupled.

I can envision two scenarios which may explain the omission of the “electrically coupled” option in the patent claims. The first is that this was a mistake, that the electrically coupled option had been dropped inadvertently. The second is that it was deliberately omitted in a response to a PTO Office Action, probably a “103 rejection” (where the invention is deemed by the Examiner to be “obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art”). In a response to this type of Office Action (which is very common), patent attorneys often limit the claims in order to further differentiate the invention from the prior art.

Possible Impact on the Participants

Now the big question is just how this will impact Curtiss-Wright and Northrop Grumman. As I stated above, I’m not a patent professional; the following are my opinions only, and the situation should be sorted out by the attorneys of the parties involved.

I should state here that this issue has no negative impact whatsoever upon the technical merits of either CWCDS’ product or Northrop Grumman’s AFT technology. Any impact would be legal and, perhaps, financial.

In either of the scenarios that I outlined above, the use of AFT technology in CDCDS’ boards is not prohibited even if electrical, rather than electro-optical, coupling is used. However, electrically coupled boards are, in my opinion, not protected under the patent. Curtiss-Wright has gained technical support and relevant expertise from Northrop Grumman through the license, but has not gained any real degree of protection for the cooling technology except in the case of electro-optically coupled devices. I’m not certain whether a court would uphold royalty payments to Northrop Grumman under the license if AFT were to be used on electrically coupled board and backplane combinations. Again, that’s for the lawyers to sort out.

In the first instance mentioned above, wherein the omission was inadvertent, I do not believe that CWCDS would have any unexpected financial exposure. However, under the second instance, where the omission was deliberate, the story may be a bit more complicated.

I have not looked at any of the prior art at all. Forty patents are listed as cited references; twenty-three of these were cited by the Examiner (the cited patents have some relevance to the patentability of the invention; the others listed are for the purpose of providing background). It is possible that one of the cited patents dominates the Northrop Grumman patent, meaning that it discloses a cooling method substantially similar to AFT. In that case the electrically coupled option may have been intentionally dropped from the claims in order to provide differentiation, and thereby make the AFT invention patentable. It is then possible that CWCDS, if they use AFT on electrically coupled boards, may be bordering on infringing this earlier patent, and thus it is conceivable that they may have some financial liability. I would suspect that, in this case, CWCDS would be held harmless and the liability assumed by Northrop Grumman because of their failure to adequately disclose that their patent didn’t cover electrically coupled devices and that another did, but one never knows. In any case it appears to me that it’s time for the lawyers. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.