The year 2020 kicks off a decade of transformation. Companies will move from a tool-centric design process to a model-centric design process–known as Digital Engineering.

Digital Engineering is part of the larger Digital Transformation movement. Many companies have recently embarked on their own Digital Transformation journey with their sights set on improving efficiency and competitiveness. A recent IDC study showed that 90% of small- and medium-sized businesses are budgeting for the digital transformation, and 73% have already begun the process. According to the survey, the top goal for these companies making the digital transformation journey is to improve product development and design processes. Let me repeat that–“the top goal for these companies making the digital transformation journey is to improve product development and design processes”.
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The edge is modular

There are exciting times ahead for the edge. If analysts’ predictions are true, we will see a massive growth at a CAGR of 54.0%[i] in the edge computing market over the next few years. Micro data centers will be located close to the infrastructure to address real-time issues in nearly all embedded markets. The cry for massive edge computing performance is coming from OEMs in markets as varied as industrial, energy & utilities, healthcare, transportation & logistics as well as retail and smart buildings & cities. The embedded computing industry already serves all these markets with low-power, ruggedized platforms that offer long term availability for harsh environments. But until today, there was a gap in processing performance for the server class, which may also include AI. The next generation of rugged mid-range server processors will address this gap, and embedded computing vendors will integrate these new processors on embedded platforms, offering nearly the same, well-known benefits for OEMs as in the past. There will be only one difference: These platforms will have brand new server-grade functionalities, including all required RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety) features such as IPMI interfaces and functionalities for out-of-band management. It is obvious that existing Computer-on-Module standards can neither cater for these server-grade functionalities nor support the latest high-speed interfaces such as 25 GbE or PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5.

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Flexibility as key enabler for success in 2020

Written by Stefan Skarin, CEO of IAR Systems

With 2020 just started, we have exciting opportunities ahead of us. We also have challenges, both when it comes to meeting customer needs as well as a being a vendor in a changing industry landscape. What I think is a key enabler going forward is flexibility, both in our offerings to customers and in the way we collaborate in the embedded industry.

During the last couple of years, one of the major trends in the embedded industry has been consolidations and changes in the ecosystem. Previous major players have become less important and new rising stars have been born. This has led to an uncertainty of what might come next, driving a need of new ways of collaborations for us as vendors. The industry is a bit more complex to describe and get an overview of. There are less “traditional” players in the market due to the consolidations. But with growing technologies such as RISC-V, security and cloud services entering embedded solutions, the ecosystem is also growing. I think we will see this accelerate further in 2020. With new collaborations, we are able to offer our customers flexibility in choosing solutions for their need. We need to show our customers that they can be this flexible. And at IAR Systems, we have already started this. Never before have we done so many integrations with other technologies as we have done the last years, and this will continue in 2020.
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Continued explosion of amount of data created causing increased development of FPGA-based hardware platforms optimized for data acceleration.

The industry has witnessed an explosion of data over the past decade with the amount of data expected to hit 175 zettabytes by 2025. The challenge ahead becomes trying to derive meaningful insights from the massive amount of unstructured and structured data. This has forced the development of many new AI hardware and software based solutions to process data in the most cost, power and time efficient manner. Addressing this challenge is much different from in the past where each generation of more powerful CPUs could keep up.

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2020 is ringing in a new decade of technological advancement. As governments focus more and more on environmental protection and the control of toxic chemicals, producers of electronic components and products will be facing an unprecedented expansion of substance control requirements.

In July 2019, the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive, which is applicable to most electronic products imported or sold within the EU, expanded its substance control list from six substances to ten for most categories of electrical equipment. These four new substances are phthalates commonly found in electronic products, forcing many material and component providers to redesign their offerings.  Similar RoHS regulations in China and UAE have also recently enacted expansions to requirements, both in scope and technical requirements. As such, regulations such as EU RoHS will become an ongoing validation exercise, as opposed to how many companies approach the issue today – as a one-time certification effort.

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Global Signal Generator Market Overview by regions:

Signal / Functions Generators and Arbitrary Waveform Generators are used for testing and research by producing all type of signals at wide range of speed and amplitude.

Signal Generator are mainly used in Telecommunication, Aerospace & Defense, Research & Development, Automotive and ATE as well for servicing & repair of electronic systems.

Asia Pacific, especially China and Australia, holds the largest market share in terms of revenue due to the major use of advanced technologies like Bluetooth and wireless services. Shift of production base from developed economies such as China and India due to low manufacturing cost are also expected to increase the market growth of Signal Generator in this region over the forecasted period. Arbitrary Wave Signal Generator segment for us is expected to grow in this region due to the emergence of digital modulation technology and the huge investments in the Physics & Quantum research.
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With more widespread adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT)—including for industrial, medical and other applications—it is clear that smaller form factors and the need for speed and efficiency will continue to provide challenges to product developers and designers.

Interface specifications from the MIPI Alliance have been engineered and refined through mobile’s 3G and 4G eras specifically to meet these sorts of challenges of the unfolding 5G world.

Take MIPI I3C, for example.

MIPI I3C was launched in 2017 to streamline sensor integration in the small, space-constrained form factors of IoT devices, as well as smartphones, wearables and other mobile-connected products.

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Security is the key, says Jacek Hanke, DCD’s CEO

Not only political situation but most of all market demand prove that security is the key in EDA world. The best example comes with DCD’s latest solution, called the CryptOne, which is a 100% safe cryptographic system based on elliptic curves. We’ve mastered this solution together with Polish cryptographers, which are well known from their mathematical abilities (not to mention they broke Enigma code just before WW2). Why do I mention that? Cause the quantum computing development which we face these days, denotes the end of classical cryptography. That’s why CryptOne stays in the forefront of the cybersecurity, cause it utilize unique & patent pending patterns which are quantum computing resistant.
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• The majority of OEMs’ businesses will be centered on delivering products-as-a-service by the end of the decade. According to IDC, 40 percent of manufacturers have some sort of IoT project underway [1] However, most OEMs’ deployed products are disconnected, or not IoT enabled. We predict that by 2030, sensor-equipped, IoT-connected products will be the norm, providing OEMs the data and insights they need to make maximizing product uptime and delivering products-as-a-service a reality.
• The majority of OEMs’ businesses will be centered on delivering products-as-a-service by the end of the decade. According to IDC, 40 percent of manufacturers have some sort of IoT project underway [1] However, most OEMs’ deployed products are disconnected, or not IoT enabled. We predict that by 2030, sensor-equipped, IoT-connected products will be the norm, providing OEMs the data and insights they need to make maximizing product uptime and delivering products-as-a-service a reality.

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