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.
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